


This One

by Nenalata



Series: This One Scarred Universe [1]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dirty Talk, Domestic Bliss, Even though it's literally what the tag system is for, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Holding Hands, I am always embarrassed tagging these things, Incredibly Lewd Marital Acts Including But Not Limited To, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Canon, Rough Sex, Self-Hatred, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Except They're Already Married, Sorry For Writing In Present Tense, Sweet/Hot, There's a new brand of Suffering out in stores today!, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vaginal Fingering, and apparently you if you read this fic, and it is exclusively for ppl named Sylvain Jose Gautier, goodness gracious, here come the dirty tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2020-10-27 20:48:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 72,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20766740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenalata/pseuds/Nenalata
Summary: "So what you really feel toward women is...?""The women who just want to use me to become nobility? Hatred's probably the right word."But hatred isn't enough to keep them from him, so why shouldn't Sylvain give them they want? As much as they want, as much as they can take, as much as he cangive. And then even more.Loving Mercedes should be different from hating those others; but it's making hatred that he's used to, not making love.So they'll take it as painfully, agonizingly, teasingly slow as they need.Or. You know. Can.





	1. Chapter 1

“Yes, Lord Gautier! Yes, please, _yes_, just like that!”

This girl has short brown hair clipped above her ears. It means there’s not much to hold onto, no way to pull her head back if he takes her on her hands and knees, so Sylvain has her half-on, half-off the bed. It gives him more leverage, more sensation, and he can go _fast _like this. If she screams, it’s because she seems pretty into it, even if she’s not entirely sure how titles in the nobility work.

She only knows the important parts.

* * *

“I love you, Sylvain. Please be gentle with me.”

But he’s not, and she should never have expected him to be. This girl’s from the newest class of Black Eagles, which means she doesn’t know anyone Sylvain does, and she had looked so cute and innocent with her little Empire-style curls until Sylvain had yanked the ribbons from her hair. She’s maybe a little too young to think she’s in love with him, and clearly hasn’t yet made enough friends at the Officers Academy to know he’s not really in love with her.

But she’s pliant and willing and thinks this is what love is, and as he spreads her legs and she bites his shoulder to keep from crying out like he instructed, Sylvain revels in his hatred.

* * *

“You don’t even know him like I do! I bet he keeps you on your stomach so he doesn’t have to see your ugly bitch face!”

“He only even looks at you ‘cause he feels sorry for you. You seduced him, didn’t you? He felt so sorry for your pathetic whore ass that he fucked you out of pity!”

Two girls are yelling at each other so loudly in the courtyard that Sylvain and this girl can hear them from their hiding place inside the smallest of the disused chapels. This girl is from town, not Garreg Mach, and by the twisted smirk on her painted lips, Sylvain can tell she thinks everyone in the monastery is spoiled and soft.

Well, she’s right, but she’s here inside it now, too, and she knew just what it meant when she’d seen Sylvain stroll away from his two fighting flings over to where she was dropping off the clean laundry for the training room and told her she was too beautiful to carry all that at once.

“No,” she gasps, pushing herself against his chest when he’s about to come, “inside me.”

Sylvain holds her in place against the rough floor, away from her insistent hands and touch and squirming, and pulls out. He spends himself on the hallowed stones to the sound of women screaming, and when this girl leaves in a huff before either of their laces are properly tied, he wants to throw up even as he wants to laugh.

* * *

There are plenty of girls who turn from him in disgust when he just says hello, but they’re mostly in the same class year as him. The students in newer classes, if they hear the rumors—which aren’t exactly easy to conceal, nor would he want to—think they can be the ones to change him. They can be the special ones.

Dorothea is one of the few girls who sees through him. Sylvain grows himself entranced by her revulsion, the way she waits until his eyes have lingered too long on her hips before she scoffs, loudly, and flounces away. She wants nothing to do with him, like so many others, and Sylvain’s not really one to force a single girl’s idolatry when there are plenty more willing to take her place. And so, while the thrill of the chase sustains him for a couple weeks—more than usual—he soon grows bored and gets the frustration out of his system with a girl a year below him who used to be in the Blue Lions but had transferred to the Golden Deer.

He’s heading to the infirmary after that to find some sort of burn cream or salve or something to ease the chafing in his palms. Maybe he’d tied the ropes too tight. Sylvain had never done that sort of thing before.

“I’ve always wanted to try it,” the girl had confessed, a purr in her voice. And with her arms trussed up above her head and ropes on her thighs giving him an easy handhold, Sylvain could see the appeal. But, as usual, she’d had a better time than he had, and so it was with the usual queasiness and dark anger that he’d left her bed. This time, however, he’s added ropeburn to the list. He’s not terribly looking forward to making up an excuse to Manuela and her all-knowing eyes, but hasn’t Ingrid always chided him on facing the repercussions of his actions?

His footsteps echo through the reception hall. There aren’t too many people around, so it’s pretty easy to catch the sight of long blonde hair rounding the corner. There’s a part of Sylvain, the part that wasn’t sated back in his room, that doesn’t want to get out of her way. So he doesn’t, and Mercedes, lost in thought, pulls up short an instant before colliding with his chest.

“Mercedes,” Sylvain croons in greeting. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

Mercedes, a fellow Blue Lion in his year, is not his type. She’s beautiful, sure. She’s got lovely, delicate features. He can imagine just how soft her perfectly-coiffed hair might feel in his fingertips, or look splayed out on a pillow. But her sparkling eyes are always directed heavenward, slender fingers clasped in prayer, and soft voice uttering trite appeals to a Goddess who cursed children like him with blessings.

Sylvain isn’t into that. But she’s a girl—a woman, really—and he doesn’t have any idea how else to talk to her.

And, sure enough: “I’m going to the cathedral now,” she beams. The glow in her joyful smile makes some part of him recoil. “Were you coming, too?”

Sylvain politely refrains from laughing. “Why should I, when I’ve got such a divine sight in front of me?”

Her smile doesn’t dim, so his confident smirk isn’t prepared to falter when she replies, “Oh, I see. You’re the type always looking at girls and saying what you hope they want to hear.”

There’s nothing caustic in her tone, no bitterness in her upturned lips. He’s not even sure she’s mocking him or stating simple fact.

Well. It’s not quite mocking if it _is _simple fact, is it?

Mercedes is already on the move by the time he’s recovered. She seems satisfied with stunning him into silence. Ordinarily, such a slight would be enough for him to shrug and move along, too, but something in him calls, “Wait.” And, even more surprisingly, “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to talk to—girls.”

Mercedes’s smile hasn’t changed at all. “From what I hear, you _talk_ to girls a lot.”

What possesses him to insist he wants to be friends? He doesn’t have _friends_ who are girls. Ingrid certainly doesn’t count—probably as either. But he does insist, and she believes him about as much as he believes himself.

But the more they talk, the more she describes her past as “boring,” the more she dismisses others’ cruelties again as another simple fact not worth dwelling on, the more he understands his life is not and never was the only one ruined by Crests…

By the time she remembers she was on her way to pray and scurries off to the cathedral, Sylvain believes himself an awful lot and hopes she wants to be friends, too.

* * *

“Oh, Goddess, please, fuck, yeah! Fuck me harder!”

This girl has long blonde hair and pretty blue eyes and a soft, pink mouth. But her hair is bunched tight in his fist, her eyes are scrunched closed with maybe fake ecstasy, and her mouth is howling filthy curses that contrast with her dainty face. Her breasts are smaller and her hips are wider, but Sylvain would be lying if he said he didn’t think she was Mercedes lost in the tavern crowd at first.

She’s definitely not Mercedes. So Sylvain gives her a taste of what she wants. He fucks her, and he fucks her harder, and he fucks her _too _hard. There are unpleasant violet stripes on her thighs that he knows will linger in the morning. Breathless and wincing, this girl is the first in months to _ask_ him to leave. She clearly doesn’t want to admit she’s sore and embarrassed and upset with him.

Sylvain can’t get the image of those bruises in the shape of his fingers out of his mind as he prepares his horse to go hunting. Not enough of his emotions devote themselves to guilt. No, there’s a revolting pleasure he takes in the memory. He hates that he hurt her. He hates that she’ll be a little unsteady on her feet for a day or two.

But he hates that she was willing to go through anything just to get knocked up by him even more.

And, most of all, he hates that he ever, for an instant, thought she resembled Mercedes at all.

Mid-hunt, he remembers sitting in the Goddess Tower with Mercedes by his side five years ago. He’d been asked by plenty of girls to go with them, but he’d smooth-talked his way out of all of them. It was one thing to go to dinner with a girl and give her expectations about his intentions. It was another thing entirely to make her think they had both sworn vows for life.

So Sylvain hadn’t quite been sure why he’d gone to the Goddess Tower at all, alone though he was. He found Mercedes tucked into a corner outside nibbling on what looked like homemade sweets. When she caught sight of him, she smiled and patted the crumbling stone next to her.

They ate little peach sweet buns by the light of the moon and fading torches. Sylvain’s not usually one for pastries, but Mercedes had baked them herself, and when she’d asked “Do you like them?” he’d said he didn’t think he’d ever eaten something so worth savoring in his life.

He hadn’t meant to say it with a raised eyebrow and slow smirk—well, _mostly _hadn’t—but Mercedes had beamed and nestled against him. “I don’t believe you,” she’d said into his shoulder, “but I hope this is the worst lie you’ll ever tell me.”

Sylvain had wanted to kiss her then, because he didn’t know what else to do or say in response. But Mercedes didn’t turn her head at all, maybe because she sensed his wish. She stayed silent and smiling until she declared herself fatigued, deposited more unrequested sweet buns in his lap—“for a good friend and a good night”—and departed without a backward glance.

Sylvain pulls up short on the reins, and his horse nickers her protests. That was five years ago.

In a few days, the millennium festival is—was—supposed to happen.

Their stupidly sentimental house had sworn an oath to return then. It seemed silly at the time, so Sylvain had gone along with it. And now, with everything around this bleeding country going on, it seems not only silly but dangerous. Dimitri is certainly executed by now. The Professor has definitely been dead for years. Everyone else has scattered.

But Mercedes seems to be the stupidly sentimental sort. He already knows Annette is. Ingrid most of all, maybe. Felix will likely stay home, but maybe he’d also know the many other Blue Lions who would get fired up about this, and would decide it’d give him an opportunity to sharpen his sword on Imperial armor en route to the monastery.

Sylvain turns his horse around immediately and wastes no time heading to the study to write them letters.

Sure enough, they’re stupidly sentimental. All of them, actually. Himself included. Dimitri doesn’t care, to put it lightly, but having someone and something to rally behind again feels unexpectedly—good.

And sitting down for foraged breakfast in the ruins of the dining hall, Mercedes bringing him, Felix, Ingrid, and Annette a plate of steamed peach buns she’d still managed to bake despite the mess of a kitchen?

Sylvain sees the outline of her breasts beneath the sunlit-white of her dress and hates that he can imagine what the imprint of his teeth would look like on them.

He takes a peach bun from her slender fingers. Her touch scalds worse than her smile.

“How do they taste?”

It doesn’t feel good.

“The prettiest little sweetness I’ve ever savored.”

* * *

Sylvain had never seen Mercedes cry until after the war.

When he’d finally broken down, that one late night alone in the cathedral, she’d held him on the pews with such gentleness that he’d nearly broken even more. She hadn’t touched his tear-streaked face until he put his head on her shoulder. She told him to cry, and he did, and he clutched her like he never had his mother, Ingrid, a friend, a girl, a woman, a lover.

And she didn’t let him hide from her the next morning, either.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of, Sylvain,” she scolded him. “I’ll remind you as many times as you need to hear if you remind me my feelings aren’t shameful, either. I’m here for you. We protect each other, don’t we?”

And they did. They do. Mercedes has become accustomed to Sylvain’s horse leaping in front of her to block a short spear as much as he has become accustomed to the slow, cool crawl of her white healing magic.

Mercedes was—is—strong. She never hesitates in defending herself, never lets Sylvain’s protection excuse her from volleying black magic missiles back.

And now, with her clinging to him on the cobblestones, heaving great sobs in the hidden balcony of the cathedral where he’d found her…

“I know it’s selfish,” she manages between gasps, “when so many have lost their own families. They’ve lost their families more times than I have, but my selfish heart bleeds all the same. For those who never loved me or even _knew _me.”

Mercedes is _strong_ and he will remind her of this as many times as she needs to hear.

Mercedes is strong enough to love him, Sylvain realizes, huddled under decaying buttresses with his shirtsleeves soaked in tears. Not just “someone like him,” but _him_. Him, Sylvain, the man she wants for comfort when the rest of the generals are celebrating with the others or grieving in private…

“I love you,” Sylvain says into her hair, and squeezes her. Just a little. “I love who you are.”

The words scrape themselves out of his throat, and Mercedes can’t say anything except sob even harder.

* * *

Sylvain hadn’t exactly remained celibate during the war. Not the five years between Edelgard’s rise to power and fall from grace, naturally. But on large campaigns, or small missions in small towns, there was always a warm body close at hand. A tent or a cottage or a palace or a copse of trees just out of the patrol’s sight could offer the same amount of comfort.

Back at the monastery—demoted from “Officers Academy” to “base of operations”—feels different. In his old room, his old bed, even, full of memories of a lighter time…

The hands that have taken so many lives without hesitation now force other, smaller hands to the silken blue sheets of his youth. Village girls trace the scars on his shoulders and legs before he stops letting them.

“Think of it like a game,” he whispers to them through smirking lips, bewitching them with a wink and a kiss. “Let’s see what you can do to me without touching me.”

Not much, as it turns out. But he can do _so much _to them. And he does. Sometimes, screams of agony don’t sound too different from screams of rapture.

Sylvain doesn’t like that he can’t always tell the difference.

But the war is over now. There’s plenty of time and reason for celebration. Dimitri will be crowned king in so many days, and a second liberation—this one being the monastery’s steadily-dwindling supply of alcohol—is well on its way to completion. Women who once rolled their eyes at his declarations of love now buy him drinks and tug down their necklines and bat their eyelashes.

Sylvain is _repulsed_, and far more than he used to be.

He wishes he could use Mercedes as an excuse. Wishes he could boldly tell them, “Flattered, miss, but I’m off the market.” Wishes he could say “I’m taken.”

“There’s someone else.”

“I’m with Mercedes.”

“I already found the only person I want tonight.”

“Or ever.”

“Always.”

But he _can’t_. The words stick. Even when Mercedes is close by, whether the latest hopeful lady is within her earshot or not, shame clogs his lungs and all Sylvain can do is shake his head and walk away, feeling or maybe imagining Mercedes’s disapproving, disappointed, unsurprised stare following his retreating form.

He always takes the drink, of course. It’s only polite, and he’s never been one to impede liberation.

* * *

“They’ll be good to each other,” the Professor says of King Dimitri and Queen—is it “Queen” now?—Queen Ingrid.

“They’ll overwhelm Fódlan with so much righteousness and propriety that even shadows will feel intimidated,” Sylvain agrees before knocking back another glass of expensive coronation wine. The restored Holy Kingdom of Faerghus spared no expense on its new king. “I can feel myself revirginizing just thinking about it.”

“That takes a lot of purity. They’ll be honored.”

“Probably. Ugh.”

Sylvain’s only a little drunk, and the Professor is as inscrutable as usual. He’d like to think the two of them have a more relaxed friendship by now, having spilled both Crested and Crest-free blood together. But sitting here, pleasantly buzzed while his Professor remains stony-faced save the slight twitch of a smile, Sylvain is reminded of the months where he sort of hated the other man.

The latest Archbishop has a lot of gall, giving all the credit of _purity _to Dimitri and Ingrid alone.

Sylvain’s about to snipe something like this when he realizes the Professor’s impassive expression has shifted, and that his attention has been drawn by something else. The coronation ball is still abuzz and aflutter, so Sylvain figures it’s Shamir or someone else the Professor knows but Sylvain doesn’t.

But it’s not Shamir.

And Sylvain _definitely_ knows Mercedes.

What he doesn’t know is Mercedes in a yellow satin gown draped over her slender frame. He’s known her modest but lovely, but never known her like _this_. Long sleeves fluttering around her arms when she moves, a delicately stitched hem brushing the floor with each graceful step, dainty pearls woven through her soft blonde hair…

He feels filthy just looking at her. He’s never wanted to touch anything so badly in his life.

Unbidden, the thought of her stretched out on his bed back in Castle Gautier, begging, breasts heaving and smooth arms reaching for him, consumes every thought he’s ever had.

And he feels _impure_.

When Sylvain whips his attention back to the Professor-turned-Archbishop, away from that awful holy sight, he finds the other man has not done the same. The Professor is studying Mercedes with the same critical eye he saves for tactical maps, ways to tear apart enemy forces, and rage has never come to Sylvain’s stomach so quickly before.

“We all know she looks good,” Sylvain snaps without thinking. The Professor startles to comic effect and, thankfully, draws his gaze away in favor of staring at him. “It’s not really news, so believe me, I know, okay? Don’t give me that judge-y look.”

The Professor has been stunned into silence, which angers Sylvain even more. He can’t even name why. “You really think I don’t know,” he laughs with a tinge of bitterness—or embarrassment, it’s hard to tell with that last glass of wine hitting, “she’s the most beautiful woman in the room?”

“I never—“

“No, you _always_! Well, you can’t judge me this time.” His voice is rising, and—oh, so is he from his seat. If anyone’s listening, he doesn’t care. Damn it all, he hopes they are. “I’m not afraid of you. Judge me all you like, _Professor_. I’m not afraid of you, or anyone, or her. I’ve got the guts to handle myself, or anyone, or her.”

“No one’s saying you don’t, Sylvain.”

Is the Professor’s voice too quiet, or is Sylvain’s too loud? “Fine. No one’s _saying _it. I’m an expert in knowing people are thinking what they won’t _say_.” He has no idea where this is coming from— “So let me _say _this: I definitely have the guts to ask that woman to marry me, and I definitely have the guts to marry her. Watch and learn, Professor. Mercedes!” He’s not certain when he’d started walking away, through a tittering crowd, towards that beacon of golden silk and glowing aura. But Sylvain does know, at some point, he’s trembling on his knees with her hands clasped in his, watching the smile on her face grow.

“What in the world are you doing?” Her whisper is the loudest sound in the world.

“I want to marry you.” But he doesn’t sound firm enough, sincere enough. He’s shaking. He can’t prove himself. “I need to marry you.” It’s not _enough_, and it never has been. “Please,” Sylvain begs, voice cracking, “I’m not afraid. I can’t be afraid with you next to me. I’ll protect you from anything until I die. Goddess willing, even longer. I’m not afraid of loving you, Mercedes, but fuck,” she laughs, and he panics and speaks faster, “I’m so afraid of living without you. I can’t lose you. Please marry me.”

Maybe somewhere, in another world, another life Sylvain knows the room is staring, as silent as death. But in this life, the only sight and sounds that matter are the corners of Mercedes’s eyes crinkling and the tinkle of her laughter, her voice saying, “Of course I will. I said I’d protect you too, didn’t I?”

In the morning, a little hungover and completely mortified, Sylvain discovers a quiet empty courtyard in the royal palace to train in, ignore any amused whispers, and forget everything he said last night, but of course Mercedes finds him and won’t let him mope. She drags him to her room.

For tea.

* * *

The Professor—no, the Archbishop—brings them together for their wedding, says the official blessings with a bored voice, and the final congratulatory pronouncements with as close to excitement as he gets. Sylvain barely pays attention, although he suspects Mercedes—his former fiancée, now his moments-long wife—has listened with joy to the Archbishop’s words.

He hasn’t cried in front of a woman other than her before, and he’s not about to start now, not with what feels like the entirety of the Gautier territory watching the promiscuous heir marry a woman of a lesser House.

Sylvain wishes, however, he could say his excitement is for the day and joy alone. That having her now and forever is happiness enough.

Sylvain wants to _have _her.

In typical Mercedes fashion, she’s refused any actions resembling “sexual” even before the engagement. Pecks on the cheek? Encouraged. Graceful declarations of his love for her and her beauty? Tolerated with exasperated amusement. A proper kiss on her full lips? Only in private. Tongue? Reserved for special occasions only, it feels like. And let the Goddess smite a wandering hand for them both.

Sylvain knows full well it’s for propriety’s sake, not holy doctrine, but such objective knowledge doesn’t cool his lust or ease his frustration. He’d been present that glorious moment in her room—for a charming but innocent tea—when she tripped on his discarded rucksack, and while steadying her he’d caught a glimpse straight down her décolletage. But she’d pushed him away before he could see more than pleasantly-curved _skin_ and smoothed back her unruffled hair. Save the rose-red hue of her cheeks, refusal to meet his desire-darkened eyes, and increased speed of her chatter, she remained unaffected.

He has _never _forgotten the sight of the scrap of lace he’d been afforded, but he hadn’t even made out its color.

And even now, in her lace wedding gown, Sylvain feels like he’s deprived of something he’s looking forward to possessing. Her dress buttons straight up her neck. The sleeves are long and loose, in typical Mercedes fashion _sense_. The skirt is also long and flowing. It all somehow manages to emphasize the curves he can’t see, highlight the tinge of pink in what skin she does show.

And it’s tragically not much.

Sylvain watches her the entire reception, thinking what Hilda cackles are “bedroom thoughts—or anywhere-thoughts, knowing you.” He gets no small amount of ribbing and decides it’s not even worth it to be subtle.

So he’s not. His fingers grazing hers with a new glass or dance or permitted kiss of the hand linger longer and longer. Mercedes turns redder and redder as the morning stretches too far into the night. His cock gets harder and harder. Everyone, every single guest must know what this prolonged agony is doing to him, and Sylvain supposes he deserves this torture after years subjecting everyone to his past philandering.

When the last guest yawns their way out of the Gautier gates, Sylvain feels his servants can’t fault him for snapping their dismissals for the evening if he gives them the morning off. He offers a curt “good night” to his family while Mercedes gives an only-slightly-more-graceful one.

When have there been so many stairs to the family quarters? Has the corridor to his suite always stretched this long? His bedroom door swings open easily and crashes behind them hard. Mercedes barely has time to gasp in surprise before he’s on her. Her lips part to let his tongue stroke hers, and if he’s ever feared Mercedes has had reservations about sex, the way she’s moaning into his mouth now says otherwise.

“You know,” he pants when they finally catch their breath, “this is kind of every teen boy’s fantasy come true.”

She laughs in time with her fingers tightening their grip on his hair. He shudders at the sensation, grazes her temple with a kiss that’s more teeth than lips. “They all want to kiss me?”

“No. Well, probably, if they ever saw you.” Sylvain pulls back to appreciate that sight properly. Silken blonde hair perfect and mussed, pink flush spread over her cheeks, chest heaving even through that constricting lace bustier. His hands run down her sides, feeling each once-forbidden curve, and when he feels her shiver, he jerks her forward, hips against hips, and starts guiding her to the bed.

“Then what?” Mercedes, mid-surprised gasp, still manages to ask. Sylvain decides she’s not sufficiently distracted. With an almost-gentle shove, carefully calculated in pressure and angle, he pushes her off him and onto the mattress. On her back, gazing not heavenwards but upwards at _him_, Mercedes’s voice in those two words sounds unlike anything he’s ever heard. Sylvain tries not to fall upon her then and there, to answer her question like a human and not devour her like an animal.

“To ravish a pretty little priest like you.” While he responds, he unbuttons and strips off his jacket and shirt with rapid, practiced ease. He doesn’t miss the way Mercedes’s eyes darken and follow his movements. “Get the Goddess’s purest ladies a little bit dirtier.”

Sylvain’s shirt is off. Mercedes’s dress must go next. He wants, needs to enjoy the sight of her stretched out and bare, ready for him. He wants to linger, make _her _wait this time, but as much as he’d love to drag this out for her with the sweetest torture, he’s honest enough with himself to know he won’t last even that long.

But they have _forever_. Days, nights, heated afternoons, unexpected trysts in the darkest corners this sprawling fortress can offer. He can play all sorts of games like this whenever he wants.

Whenever they want.

Sylvain joins her on the bed then, bent on top of her, trapping her thighs between his knees. The cursed buttons by her neck need to be the first thing to tear. He’ll take his time as much as he can. Make her scream his name before he’s even halfway down her body. Even the thought makes him close his eyes and shiver, fingers trembling on the top clasp. He bends down to kiss her again, because it’s already been too long since he’s tasted her, but she turns her face so that his lips land on her cheek instead.

“Why would this be dirty?”

Well, Sylvain won’t deny it’s a fair question, but he also won’t deny this is a subject he’s not terribly interested in pursuing. “We can find out,” he whispers against the shell of her ear. The first clasp snaps open, and he feels rather than hears her breathing quicken.

“I love you, Sylvain,” she says. It’s not a whisper. There’s no hesitation. Sylvain’s free hand presses her wrist against his sheets and he kisses her jittery pulse. The second clasp breaks free. “There’s nothing ‘dirty’ about it.”

“Mm.”

“Sylvain?”

“Mm?” He’s figured out the buttons’ trick. Now that he’s gotten the hang of it, they’re falling apart faster than Mercedes’s heartbeat pinned beneath his hand. Her skin is soft here, or at least it looks it. Just as soft as he’d hoped. Sylvain can see the very top of her breastbone now. A few more buttons and he’ll be able to see the swells of the breasts _beneath_. A few more buttons past those, and he’ll be able to push the top half of her dress past her collarbones.

So much for moving slowly. Not that he’d truly ever believed in his self-control.

“Do you think it’s dirty?”

“Do I think what is, baby?” Sylvain can hardly hear her over the pounding in his ears. His fingers tremble around the next button.

Mercedes’s own hand, the one he hasn’t trapped, shoots up and grabs his wrist, preventing him from pulling the button to pieces. Irritation larger than a “flicker” flashes in his chest. “Do you think loving me is dirty?”

“Of course not,” the easy and familiar words spill out. Sylvain’s shocked by how quickly he’s able to say them, but more shocked by how honest he feels in doing so. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, you know that. You stepped out of a divine revelation to bless me, and I don’t know what I did to deserve your praise.”

He intends to punctuate the flowery but earnest phrase with a long, lingering kiss to leave her breathless, to bring the conversation back to gasping and pleading for more, but she wiggles away. Literally wiggles—her hips squirm beneath his, making him bite back a groan. She and her half-open collar escape up the mattress to lean against his pillows.

Sylvain’s not one for a chase right now, but he can appreciate the attempt at this kind of seduction. He’s sure his grin is predatory, probably feral, when he languidly crawls up after her, but the tips of her toes pushing against his bare chest give him pause.

She’s not lounged on his bed like a temptress.

She’s curled up on the edge like trapped prey.

When Mercedes seems sure he won’t follow her, that he’s frozen in place like Sylvain thinks she wants, her shoulders visibly relax.

It _hurts_.

But her hands on his jaw are soft when he lets her come close, to lift up his chin in her fingers. And her voice is too, too soft when she says, “No.”

Under her loving gaze, Sylvain’s blood turns to ice. Eloquence, for once, fails him.

“What?”

The voice he loves to hear, so soft it could break him, repeats, “No. Stop, Sylvain. We can’t continue.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, wow, thank you so much for this positive reception. I really didn't expect so many people to get excited like all of you did, and I just wanted to thank you over and over and over for your kudos, bookmarks, beautiful & loving comments, and subscriptions (greetings from your inbox!). You have made me go through my week with so many smiles and "I'm doing fantastic! You?" to café workers. Thank you for that.
> 
> If you're so inclined, I'd love to continue hearing your thoughts (even if they're not praise!); gives me an excuse to avoid doing work and keep my office full of toys, stuffed animals, and games a den of Mercylvain filth.
> 
> thas a good ship name, rite?

* * *

Too many emotions flood Sylvain’s senses. There are too many to name, and they’re all painful in their own unique way. He can’t speak around them, but Mercedes seems to understand that. She speaks for them both.

“You’re here with me, but you feel so far away.”

He swallows around the sudden suffocating lump in his throat. Mercedes observes what must be a shift in his expression and lets her hands drop from his jaw.

Sylvain doesn’t want her to do this.

“This is what you did with the other girls, isn’t it? The girls who wanted your ‘Crest baby.’ This is how you touched them.”

Sylvain wants her to stop talking.

“You wanted to punish them for pretending to love you. You hated they’d let you touch them however you pleased, that they were just putting up with you to get what they wanted out of you.”

Sylvain wants her to be quiet.

“But we’re not pretending, right? You’re not pretending to love me. And I never needed any comparisons to the Goddess to fall in love with you. I already fell in love with you. I love you because I’m me and you’re you.”

Sylvain wants her to shut up.

“So please don’t punish me because we love each other, okay? We promised we’d be honest and protect each other, and that includes from ourselves—“

“Shut up!”

Sylvain’s off the bed and backed into a corner as far away from her as he can manage. He never thought he could move that fast off the battlefield. And he had never thought he could say something like that to a woman, to anyone, really—never to _Mercedes_. But he can’t take it back.

She’s wide-eyed on the mattress. Her dress is half-buttoned down the neck, and she’s clutching the gaping fabric like it’s a fresh wound in want of stitches.

“I can’t—“

It’s not an apology he’s trying to form. It’s something much more desperate.

“You can,” Mercedes tells him firmly. Even half-dressed in a state of utter disarray, she’s a pillar of calm and reason. Someone who knows him far too well when he doesn’t want to know himself. The sternness in her expression softens in a way that makes his unfair outburst shame him even more. “But maybe not tonight.”

Sylvain laughs then, a choked exhalation. “No, not tonight.”

“Come here.”

He wishes he wouldn’t obey. But his feet and heart have other ideas. They fall into each other’s arms at the same time. He can’t even pretend they’re both shaking, because she’s holding him steady and stroking his bare back while the lace on her arms stays still and rough on his skin.

“We’ll be slow,” Mercedes says into the crook of his neck. “I need time, too. This is very different from what we had before, isn’t it?”

Sylvain presses his face into her hair and hopes the sound he makes can be taken as assent.

After a few moments, she goes behind the dressing screen to change into a nightgown. Sylvain can hear the rustle of fabric and the popping of buttons like a fusillade. He’s very much not asleep when she slides under the covers with him. He very much wishes he was, because when Mercedes inches closer with so much hesitation it pains him, he can’t stop himself from reaching for her and holding her tightly, comfortingly, and far too innocently.

* * *

“I’m sorry.”

Mercedes stirring awake is a vision to behold. She’s a side-sleeper, apparently, which Sylvain had discovered when he’d awoken first on his stomach, one arm keeping her close with ease. But the smell of her hair, the fabric of her nightgown brushing against his wedding trousers under their sheets, had brought his shame flooding back.

He’d never leapt out of bed nor dressed so quickly. He’s sitting now at the desk near the window. He’d considered hiding in their parlor, but had knocked that idea away almost the moment it had formed.

Mercedes blinks at him, squinting in the sunlight streaming behind him. “Good morning,” she says in response. She starts to peel back the covers, and Sylvain glances away from her bare legs. “Oh, don’t be like that.”

She hadn’t sounded annoyed with him before, but she doesn’t try to hide it now. Guilt makes his voice thick. “I shouldn’t have—“

“Hey, now.” Mercedes’s delicate footsteps whisper across the thick carpet. Her fingers are carding through his combed hair before Sylvain can flinch away. “You shouldn’t have, but you did. And I’m still here, right?”

“Oh, Mercedes,” Sylvain laughs, “you’re killing me here. Let me feel a little bad, okay?”

“Okay. For a little while. But if you’re still moping by the time I want lunch, I’m going to eat all of your pastries and refuse to share a single bite.” She squeezes one of his hands, and his fingers feel cold when she lets them go. “We can’t start slow if we’re staying put.”

“Huh.” He stares at his lap, his upturned palm. Mercedes waits for him to continue, but when he doesn’t, she pulls away and putters to her dressing room door. Sylvain thinks his words are so quiet as to be unheard when he says to himself, “I like holding your hand.”

Her door clicks open. Mercedes’s voice floats over her shoulder as she heads inside to change. “I like holding your hand, too.”

* * *

And that’s how it starts.

That’s how Mercedes begins going out of her way to drive him _insane_.

“I thought you liked holding my hand?” she asks him as they stroll through town. She sounds hurt, probably due to the speed with which Sylvain had extracted himself from her fingers.

“I do, I do.”

But Sylvain sidesteps her when she reaches for him again and plucks a necklace from a merchant’s stand. He hooks both index fingers around the chain and holds it up against her neck to admire it. “Have you thought about something like this? I’ve never seen you in purple before.”

Mercedes bats the jewelry away with an impatient furrow to her brow. “I don’t want something purple. I want—” Sylvain bows his thanks to the curious merchant and returns the necklace.

“Shall we—“

Mercedes cuts off his proposal of a vague activity with, “I want you to hold my hand.”

Sylvain laughs and puts his hands on his hips. “You know, I’m glad you’re more interested in my fingers than jewels.”

“Sylvain.”

“Fine, fine.” He extends his hand, palmside up. Mercedes hesitates, then reaches for it. She squeaks the cutest little sound when Sylvain grabs the tips of her fingers and tugs her so she’s flush against his chest, her hand trapped between them. He can feel her heartbeat speed up like an overwound clock. Her breath catches when he leans in close and murmurs just above her ear, “I aim to please.”

“Sylvain, come now. We’re in public.”

It isn’t like much is going to happen in private, Sylvain can’t help but think with a twinge of annoyance. He pulls her closer. Yes, they’re practically indecent now. But not a single person in this town will be surprised to see the heir of House Gautier getting handsy—and, well, other parts, given how close their hips are now—in public with brazen freedom. “No one will mind,” he tells her, lips moments away from a long kiss behind the shell of her ear. “Let ‘em watch.”

Mercedes has always been stronger than she looks, damn her. She tugs herself out of his intimate embrace with enough force to free herself but enough gentle reluctance so as not to embarrass either of them in front of the townsfolk. “We said slow.”

“I’m fine, Mercedes. Seriously.”

“Well, I’m not. Please. Slow. For me.” Her face is cherry red and she’s breathing fast and the way she’s shifting so that her dress falls differently around the middle of her thighs tells a different story. Sylvain raises his brows, and if possible, she flushes darker. “Please hold my hand first.”

“‘First,’ huh?” he winks, but he knows when he’s been defeated. He can’t be the one to reach out. He can’t name why. But when she clasps their hands together and recommences their stroll, Sylvain internally chants reminders like a mantra, reminders not to pull away.

To hold her hand tighter when a woman walks by.

To repress a twitch to disentangle himself when a man passes.

Sylvain is exhausted by the time Mercedes is hungry and wants to head home.

“Are we onto ‘second?’” he grins when they’re back in their quarters. Mercedes laughs and rings the bell for dinner but otherwise doesn’t respond. At all.

And it only gets worse.

* * *

One of the tactician room guards bursts into surprised laughter when she sees the two of them enter hand in hand. She tries to turn the sound into a garbled cough, but the damage has been done. Sylvain doesn’t know what the glare he sends her looks like, but it’s enough to turn her face ashen and her grip around her lance shake.

He and Mercedes take their seats to the right of his father. Out of the corner of his eye, Sylvain sees another guard in the room kick the laugher’s armored boot.

Mercedes’s grip slackens under the table and she smiles at him with sympathetic embarrassment. But it feels like a challenge now. He narrows his eyes, smirks with more confidence than he feels, and squeezes. His hand stays put.

For a time.

For more than a week, Mercedes has been frustratingly patient with him. He was able to use the nervous sweat on his palm at first, excusing himself from cute little hand-holding sessions and promenades for more than an hour, a half-hour, fifteen minutes. But his hands and nerves became accustomed to the softness of her palm, and that excuse stopped holding water. Literally.

She could have relented. She could have pretended to believe him. Or she could have been like so many others—could have begged him with tears in his eyes, thrown accusations of his waning love for her.

But Mercedes is _not _like the others, and while this is one of the reasons Sylvain loves her so much it aches…

She’s been giving him a lot of different excuses lately. Excuses that make him _want _to hold her hand.

Laughing so sweetly at one of his ridiculous love poems he’d taken to writing for the sheer hilarity of it. Fingers hiding her lips, but failing to smother her giggles in public.

Returning from a business day trip to check on crop fields in the south of Gautier territory and slowly stripping off her travel gloves with her teeth tugging on the leather. Smiling around her fingertips when she catches him staring.

Failing to notice the slow, appreciative ogle the royal treasurer’s son bestows upon her rear while she looks for very specific records on the approaching harvest season. Bouncing on her toes to check this shelf and that shelf, darling, I’m so sorry, I can’t find it just yet, I must seem terribly scattered, please continue, I’ll keep searching, oh, there it is, let me just bend over the desk slightly to deposit them.

Patting his leg gently at dinner to emphasize a point and not realizing her nails have grazed a deliciously sensitive part of his thigh. Pulling her hand away to continue talking a mere instant before he’s about to snatch her close again.

Mercedes wants to kill him. Sylvain’s certain of it.

“…the eastern territories faring?”

“Oh, they’re fine,” Sylvain answers his father blandly. He knows what’s going on in this meeting. He definitely does. All of the jaunts all over Gautier lands, all the droning meetings with sycophants, all the hours outdoors so soon after his wedding when he’d love to be doing nothing but staying _indoors_…it has all led up to a single three-hour-long meeting with his father and advisors about vegetables.

It is very important.

Food is important.

He’s totally _with it _and _on task_.

He’s answering his father’s questions when asked. Mercedes chimes in as needed.

Important.

Important subjects.

Mercedes’s hand in his is also important.

Because he doesn’t know how it happened—that’s a crucial detail; he _doesn’t_ know how—but it’s ended up a little higher on his thigh than last time. The innocent-dinnertime-conversation time. Sylvain’s palm is upturned and Mercedes's fingers rest on top.

That’s _important_. It’s not Sylvain’s hand that can position hers easily. But he severely doubts Mercedes is even aware of how their laced fingers have crept into dangerous territory. They’d started off the meeting in the neutral territory of the outside of his mid-thigh.

And now they’ve somehow slid onto his inner upper thigh. Unsatisfying in its distance. Well-past “indecent” in its…proximity.

Mercedes nods at something his father says and turns to Sylvain with a smile on her face to confirm whatever was just said. Sylvain nods, too. It’s probably the correct thing to do. He tries to push Mercedes’s hand back into a much safer location, which would be somewhere farther from his suddenly-achingly-hard cock than it is now. But Margrave Gautier—the real one—furrows his brow.

“And? What was their answer?”

Sylvain gulps. Mercedes squeezes the hand on his inner thigh reassuringly, like it’s his father’s expectations making him nervous. As if he’s completely aware of what the question his father had asked was.

Well, there’s no way he can tell her to move her hand _now_. So he doesn’t.

Sylvain fakes his way through the rest of the meeting with something akin to vengeance on his mind.

* * *

"You need to stop eye-fucking your wife."

Sylvain applauds himself on not reeling backwards like Felix had thrown a punch. "It's been great having you here, Duke Fraldarius. When are you headed back to your own territory?"

"Cut the bullshit," Felix snaps with his usual loving and lovable venom. "Go back to your quarters. Don't make the rest of us imagine what you wish you were getting up to. We're trying to get work done."

"'Imagining,' huh? What kind of imagining?" Sylvain's done a lot of imagining himself, but he's not going to tell Felix that.

Felix, who is...blushing. Which is absolutely adorable. The way he spent what feels like the entire war "eye-fucking" Annette makes Sylvain suspect Felix is a pro at _imaginings_.

"Come on. You know what I meant. Keep it together until the rest of the nobles are well away. We all know what that entails. You're a married noble yourself now, aren't you?"

Presumably, if consummation doesn't matter.

"So act like it. Have some dignity."

Sylvain's enjoyed letting Felix have his little monologue, but the Archbishop has just rounded the corner with Mercedes chatting up a storm. This is a conversation Sylvain definitely doesn't want either of them joining.

"I'm the most dignified. Isn't that right, sweetheart?" Mercedes and the Archbishop pull up short in front of him. Sylvain takes Mercedes's hand in his own and brushes his lips over her knuckles.

Felix makes a disgusted noise behind him, something akin to "this is what I'm talking about" or maybe some other word for "insatiable." The Archbishop sighs, but it's more good-natured, or at least not annoyed.

Mercedes, however, _glows _pink. And Sylvain's smile against her skin grows predatory.

"Duke Fraldarius, the two of us should probably leave the Gautier heir alone now. He's got a new heir to make. We've kept him long enough."

Felix's scoff sounds like a retch. "You see? It's not only me—"

Mercedes snatches her hand away, like her body has finally caught up with the conversation trail. "I'm so sorry, Felix, Your Excellency—"

The Archbishop only grins at her. Dark anger coils in Sylvain's chest. That man has chided him time and time again on his love and his conquests and nighttime adventures. But put a beautiful little bishop in front of him and slap a Gautier Crest-embossed signet ring on her finger, and suddenly Sylvain's libido is worth something again.

And he needs to stop _looking _at that beautiful little bishop like _that_.

That anger makes him act. With speed usually reserved for blocking an enemy axe Sylvain wraps his shield arm around Mercedes's waist and drags her so close to him that he can feel her heartbeat pound beneath her breasts. "You know I'm always down for a chat with you both," Sylvain drawls, "but I'm a busy guy who takes his friends' advice. Your Excellency. _Felix_." He nods at each of them in turn and, a confused Mercedes in tow, heads out of the reception room into the main parlor.

"Sylvain? What's wrong?"

Sylvain doesn't answer with words.

He's not gentle enough when he pushes her against the side of a cabinet. Its curios rattle behind glass doors. She's trapped in the corner now where the wall meets a window, wide blue eyes blinking and a flush in her cheeks deepening. Her breaths come shallow but fast. Sylvain doesn't give her much time to recover past that before he presses her harder against the wood and kisses her.

It's a bruising kiss, teeth and tongue and an animalistic possession more than anything else. He traces her bottom lip with the tip of his tongue in a deceptive display of tenderness before he slips it inside her mouth. When she comes back to her senses and moans, the sound rattles through his bones.

Mercedes's shaking hands grip his face, fingers cupping his jaw and thumbs pressed to his cheeks. They've kissed like this, but never _like this_. Sylvain's always been aware of her inexperience, as has she, and one of his sweeter pleasures has been discovering things about her, about himself, teaching her kiss by loving kiss.

This is love, but it's not, in a way. And it's not sweet. And she's inexperienced, doesn't know what's happening or why. And something ugly rearing its head inside him loves that, wants to rip that inexperience to tatters. Wants to make Mercedes know his touch so well that she won't even need to tell him what she wants anymore. She can trust him to know, let him move her body how he wants and how she _needs_ without saying a single word. Him and only him forever and all the time.

Sylvain wants to claim her like this. Against this cabinet, maybe. He doesn't care. He doesn't want to hold her hand right now, and judging by the way she's panting while he sucks hard on a small spot on her neck just under her ear, she doesn't want her hand held, either.

Well, he's holding it anyway, but her wrist is pinned to a foggy part of the window. Her fingers clutch at nothing, twitching but not resisting. Mercedes bites her lip and whines when his tongue laves a trail down the side of her neck. There's barely any skin to bite here. Her neckline begins above her collarbones. The sleeves connect there. They even rudely cover her shoulders. Sylvain's free hand shoves the fabric aside—just a little, just enough urgency to frighten her but not frighten her _away—_and grazes the skin with his teeth. He laughs when her whine grows into a shameless moan.

It's his _name_.

The other sleeve remains prim and unblemished. Her dress's décolletage is deliciously off-kilter now, but Sylvain's too hungry to linger on the sight and wants that skin-baring symmetry, wants more at his mercy. He reaches to pull that aside, too, and in doing so, releases Mercedes's hand.

Something horrible and icy douses the fiery lust ravaging his mind. He leaps away from Mercedes like she was the one burning him. "Fuck," he whispers, taking her in, but it's not a good word this once. "Fuck. Fuck."

Mercedes looks like something from one of his old wet dreams, the ones from his school days when he dismissed her sexual existence as merely an enjoyable nighttime fantasy.

Her rumpled blonde hair falls around her pink face, head tilted against the cabinet and bitten neck bared. Each breath comes out as a gasp. Sylvain can see the topmost curves of her breasts peeking from beneath her bodice, because the sleeves are askew and, on one side, even torn at the part closest to the neckline. Every bit of shown skin is mottled where his mouth hasn't bruised it.

Mercedes's eyes are so dark, alight with indigo flames.

"Fucking Felix," Sylvain spits, raking a hand through his hair. Goddess curse him, he can feel it sticking up in all directions. "That _fucking—"_

"Why did you—" Mercedes clears her throat, and the sound alone makes Sylvain have to restrain himself again. "What happened?"

She's running her fingers through her hair and brushing down her dress like _those _are the problem. Sylvain can't bring himself to worry how she'll manage to fix up the torn sleeves quickly, because the stairs to the family quarters are just outside this parlor, and it's not like they have to worry about anyone judging them.

It's Castle Gautier.

It's their home.

It's _her _home.

They have, quite literally, the rest of their lives to do this, much less _fix her sleeves_.

"_Fucking _Felix!"

"Sylvain," Mercedes snaps. "What did he say to you?"

She's so cute. Standing in front of him with her hands on her hips with blooming red marks all over her neck and lust-darkened eyes, Mercedes's frustration with him seems less about his reasons for stopping and more for the fact he stopped at all. But even now, Sylvain's impressed by the attempt. That she knows something isn't right, that she needs to stop, too.

"We need to go slow," Sylvain stammers. He scrubs his face instead of slapping himself. Mercedes nods. Sylvain wonders if the reluctance on her face is as intense as he hopes. Because if he's the only one who needs to drown himself in a lake of ice and maybe a lot of alcohol, he'll spend the rest of his life blind from shamefully jacking off.

"I'm sorry."

Sylvain coughs a laugh. "Man, if _you _feel like you need to apologize—"

"I, ah, should have realized something was amiss, and—"

"Mercedes," Sylvain interrupts her, more impatiently than he feels, "I'm the one that needs to check myself. Not you. C'mere." He extends his hand. The instants between his peace offering and her hand clasped in his torture him, but they're mercifully brief. "Let's have dinner in town tonight."

Mercedes smiles with bruised lips. The corner of her bottom lip is a little bloody, and he drags his stare up to her face. "Can we try that sweet little Almyran place? The new one?"

Sylvain chuckles and leads her out of the room. Any chatty servants who get in their way better prepare themselves for the eternal flames. "Always knew you had bad taste."

"No," she disagrees. "I have very good taste." She punctuates her point with a little squeeze of their joined hands, and Sylvain makes a show of groaning and rolling his eyes.

Well. He did walk into that one.

When the restaurant server gapes at Mercedes's hastily-rearranged-backwards dress, the sharp smile Sylvain offers the man could cut boulders. He's sure his own lips are bloody, his glare flinty-eyed, and with Mercedes rattling off both their orders with too many embarrassed giggles, the server knows his place and practically runs inside to the kitchens.

Mercedes exhales, a dramatic _whoosh_. "Goodness. Why in the world did we think it was a good idea to eat in public? I can't believe myself."

Sylvain tugs her hand under the patio table, and she scoots her chair closer. He leans in with enough slowness she could escape, but she doesn't. No, _she_ leans in, which doesn't help him say with enough honesty, "Because if we eat in public, I won't want to eat _you_."

Mercedes squeaks and scoots away, much to his delight. Sylvain's uproarious laughter echoes throughout the town square, and Mercedes spends the rest of the meal with her eyes on her plate and her hand on his thigh.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your kudos, bookmarks, subscriptions, and kind words continue to make my heart light as I go about my day! I won't get sappy again. This one's short, btw, but uh hopefully makes up for the monster that is the next chapter so...look forward to that? I guess? Maybe? (Probably)

* * *

Mercedes looks lovely every morning, even when she doesn’t wake up that way. Sylvain loves her when she sputters awake with hair in her mouth. He loves her when she grimaces and wipes drool off the corner of her lip. He loves her when she groans, “I must look so unkempt.”

“You do,” he tells her, and they both laugh together and smooth each other’s hair. So domestic it hurts.

Mercedes looks ravishing every morning, even when she doesn’t wake up that way. Sylvain wants her when her nightgown is hiked up and bunched around her hips and he can see the soft whiteness of her leg for miles. He wants her when she stretches and her breasts lift and fallwith the movement of her arms. He wants her when she catches him staring and, cherry-red, uselessly tugs her nightgown this way and that to cover whatever bits she’s deemed the distraction and instead just further draws his attention to those places.

Every painful morning, Mercedes looks ready to be thrown back to the mattress and devoured. Stripped of anything resembling fabric. Unable to hide from his eyes and hands and cock. Gasping his name and digging her heels into the sheets and fingers trying to cover her face.

Or moaning face-first into the pillow with his hands pushing insistently on her hips.

Or panting with her hands gripping the headboard as he pounds into her from behind.

Or screaming while he pulls her just off the edge of the bed and spreads her legs wide.

Or begging for more with his face between her thighs.

Sylvain’s not picky, really. Their first time doesn’t have to be limited to the bed—probably won’t be, if his cock has any say in it. The couch in their sitting room is a good candidate, but the floor wouldn’t be a bad choice, either. The wall would suffice if nothing else. He’s not usually one for bath sex, but if that were the only opportunity—

Mercedes stirs in her sleep, humming something dreamlike with a sweet smile in the dawn sunbeams. Sylvain forces himself out of bed and calls for a bath. He feels human again by the time she’s awake and brushing her hair, and his pants fit comfortably at least for the next few hours.

* * *

Sylvain’s spent all day in the library. It started off as business. Some lords and heirs don’t pay too much attention to the numerical upkeep of their finances or territories beyond which areas to tax or send soldiers to, but Sylvain’s family had never been one of those. Margrave Gautier had told Sylvain to cross-reference the number of guards and ratio of cavalry to fliers to foot soldiers at different fortresses from years past.

Sylvain never really minds that kind of work. It’s kind of cool, actually, especially to see how the armor types and weapon technology has changed. Halfway through a description of ballistae repair procedures, he'd remembered Ferdinand had been into that kind of stuff, or at least had been when they were students.

But then he remembered blood gushing from the hole Sylvain’s lance had punched through his chest. The way more had bubbled between his lips, the way Ferdinand had almost choked to death on his own blood before Shamir had let fly an arrow from halfway across the entire bridge and ended his misery. Clean through the heart.

So then Sylvain distracted himself by going through a history and evolution of fort construction. And now he’s calmer and full of interesting architecture facts, and he’s even noted some details that their industrial advisor might find compelling. He hasn’t seen Mercedes all day, but he does see a couple of noble friends from his favorite tavern who came by to convey some of their own parents’ messages.

They’re just as terrible at cards as they were months ago when he last saw them. It’s not like any of them need the gold, so they play in dares and tricks.

“Not gonna drag us out to hit on ladies as punishment this time?” the oldest of them winks, and the other two laugh. Sylvain sighs; honestly, it was impressive they’d waited this long.

“Nah; the goal’s to punish _you_, not the ladies.”

“Speaking of punishment and ladies,” the youngest chimes in, “how’s the ball and chain?”

Sylvain raises his eyebrows. “What ‘ball and chain?’”

The youngest looks baffled, but the other two shake their heads. “You know,” he continues blindly, molding the approximate shape of a curvaceous woman in the air. “The ball and chain.”

Sylvain smirks and inspects his wedding ring with obvious casualness. “What ‘ball and chain?’” he repeats, and when the oldest laughs and the middle one makes gagging noises, Mercedes takes the opportunity to enter their sitting room.

Sylvain’s three friends shut up and cast furtive glances at each other. Sylvain hasn’t said anything wrong, however, so it’s mostly kind of sweet that his friends are concerned that way, even if it says something pretty unpleasant about his past habits.

“I’m so sorry,” Mercedes squeaks. “I didn’t know you had guests.” She’s about to bolt, but something in her expression that has nothing to do with the four men in their sitting room makes Sylvain get to his feet fast. The card table clatters and his friends bluster little noises of protest, but he races out the door to their bedroom.

Mercedes has perched herself on the window seat with embroidery in her shaking hand. “Hello, Sylvain.” The quaver in her voice covers any fake cheer she attempted to muster. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

“Hey.”

Mercedes’s smile breaks, and the tears spill over.

“Hey, now.” She drops the embroidery and pats the space next to her instead of answering. The silk cushions sink beneath his weight, and he nudges her hip with his. “Scooch over. Talk to me.”

“I just remembered the date.”

“The date?” For a second, Sylvain’s heart crashes in his chest. Has he forgotten their date? Had they even planned one? He thought she was going to spend the day baking with the tea-seller’s kids.

“Seven years ago. It was the Battle of the Eagle and Lion.”

Sylvain doesn’t love the relief that rushes through him, but she’s right. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and kisses the top of her head. “You’re right. Wow. Yeah. We won it.”

“Yes. I suppose.”

It’s foggy out. It’s pleasant and cozy, or at least it was when he and his friends had first sat down to cards in the afternoon. Now, what with the late hour and the heavy conversation topic, it’s oppressing. Mercedes stays still in his arms, silent. After some time, she shifts closer. Her voice breaks with her whisper.

“A lot of our friends…our classmates…”

“We killed them.” Sylvain’s voice comes out flat like a hammer on a nail. He can feel her nod against his chest. “I think about it, too.”

He wraps his arms around her tighter then, and she gives herself over to more tears. And, because she’s reminded him without words not to be ashamed of crying, he lets his own tears fall into her hair. She grips his arms and he keeps her close, and he hugs her through their pain and the shared memories, holds her tight because they survived long enough to love each other until now.

* * *

"Mercie!"

Mercedes opens her arms wide, and Annette flies into them. They're chattering and planning makeup adventures and squealing away down the reception hall before Sylvain can even greet her properly.

_Her Majesty the Queen _chuckles and toys with her braid. "Am I sure glad that's not me. It was enough having Mercedes pick out my—eyeliner. If I'd had both of them running my wedding..."

"Eh, you still looked fine." Ingrid's expression darkens, and Sylvain backtracks fast. "Beautiful! Utterly stunning. Dimitri wasn't the only one who couldn't keep their eyes off—"

A too-friendly and too-hard hand slams on his shoulders. "I'd reconsider the rest of that sentence were I you, old friend," Dimitri advises. Goddess, that man has really gotten enormous, even without his fluffy coat and hair neatly restrained beneath a golden band.

"The only one who couldn't keep their eyes off the floor," Sylvain finishes with a somber nod. "We all squeezed our eyes and hands closed, praying for a happy marriage and prosperous Kingdom. Man, there is no winning with either of you," he complains when both their gazes turn flinty.

Ingrid rolls her eyes and starts walking. Dimitri and Sylvain follow her lead, their retinue peeling off with each step. It's all a flash of shiny armor and multiple sigils and the occasional lost cat wandering the halls of Castle Fraldarius. "Speaking of short tempers, where's the man of the hour? Think he's training even on his wedding weekend?"

"Of course not." A flat voice.

"There he is!" Sylvain rushes forward to clap Felix on the back. Either he doesn't dodge in time—unlikely—or he puts up with it, but either way, Felix grimaces. "Who ever would have thought this day would come? Our baby Felix, preparing for marital bliss—"

"—instead of _martial _bliss—" Ingrid's grinning, too, and Dimitri's polite cough sounds more like an attempt to smother laughter than bring conversation back to congratulations.

"I knew I shouldn't have invited any of you, but she _insisted—"_

Sylvain cackles, thumps Felix's back one more time, and heads off in search of the training grounds. After the long trip trapped with Mercedes in the carriage with a lot of kissing and holding and stroking and touching that kept going nowhere, he needs to get his energy out _somewhere_.

* * *

Felix deserves a nice wedding, and he gets one. Sylvain’s stunned speechless when he coos “Aww, you finally found something you love more than training,” and Felix looks away and mumbles, “I did.”

Mercedes has to drag him away like a bag of flour after that.

The food is incredible, although with a carnivore for a groom and a baker for a bride, no one’s really surprised that they had planned such a high-quality wedding banquet.

“Here, try this one.” A tiny fruit tart materializes before his face, held aloft by Mercedes’s tapered fingers. “I helped Annie choose this one.”

“Oh?” Sylvain accepts it and pops it into its mouth. “Wow. Okay, I see why. Not too sweet, huh?”

Mercedes beams. “I knew you’d understand! I doubt Felix will eat it regardless, but just in case he does, well…” She looks so quietly proud of herself that Sylvain wants to hug her.

But they’re sitting across from each other at the nobility’s table, and there are too many empty tureens of fruit compote and platters of honeyed bread for him to lean over and do so. He contents himself by complimenting the choice again.

“Thank you, I thought—oh, try this one, too!” She looks even more pleased this time, holding some sort of fried dough ball in two fingers. “Say ‘aaah!’”

_Too cute_. Annette had done her makeup, too, and Annette has less subtle tastes. Mercedes’s eyes look bigger and brighter under—whatever the thing was that makes her eyelashes look longer. And her blush is even more pronounced with the smudge of powder on her cheeks.

Hilda had chosen the dress, though.

And Mercedes has to bend over a bit to put the little piece of dough close to his mouth and avoid the silver cakestands.

Sylvain holds her expectant gaze, opens his mouth, and leans in. “Aaah,” he complies, voice edged with dark promise. His lips brush her fingers, his teeth sink into soft cream-piped cake, and the tip of his tongue flicks against the pad of her thumb.

If Mercedes was blushing before, she’s feverish now.

“Delish,” Sylvain smiles at her. It’s not even a smirk. He’s so mature these days.

“Ah. Yes. Quite.”

He enjoys the sight of her frozen and heated in front of him while he piles his dessert plate high, because the dough things really are tasty. But even he knows it’s not _his _day to “eye-fuck” his wife. He’s cleaned his plate and is finishing off the rest of Mercedes’s untouched sweets when the gentle whisper of strings and flutes float over from the end of the hall.

“Oh, the dancing’s started up again. Shall we, sweetheart?” Sylvain stands and offers his hand to her, which seems to snap her out of it. She dabs his sugar-powdered fingers with water and part of the tablecloth, which makes him laugh, before taking his hand and letting him guide her to the dance floor.

Dancing doesn’t help the flush leave Mercedes’s skin. The dress Hilda had cajoled Mercedes into wearing has a keyhole cutout above the breasts. It’s not very large, nor deep, but it’s enough to see pink and feel her heart hammer close and warm against his shirt. The sleeves are also shorter than what Mercedes usually wears, which means they end a little below the shoulder. Positively wanton.

Sylvain can’t help but wonder if there’s some sort of…suggestion Mercedes is trying to make. Weddings do things to people, after all.

He also can’t help but think of their own. What things they _didn’t_ do.

The two of them waltz past Felix and Annette. Annette is the very picture of sunshine clasped in the moon’s loving embrace, Felix’s smile so small and genuine that it makes Sylvain smile, too. He’s so lost in his wedding day that he doesn’t even glare when their eyes meet.

Felix doesn’t like sweets. It’s not like he hates them or has particularly strong feelings about them, like Mercedes with burning-hot spice. But they’re not something he’d choose for a snack or eat because everyone else was—as if Felix would do _anything _because of that—whereas Annette seems to inhale sugar wherever she goes.

And Mercedes had ensured Felix and Annette would have pastries at their wedding that both of them could enjoy.

The song ends, and they step apart. Sylvain bows, his eyes now level with that little blushing keyhole, and when he stands upright again, Mercedes is looking at him under lowered lashes.

Sylvain remembers the taste of her perfumed skin mingling with that soft, not-too-sweet cream and pulls her into a tight hug.

“I love you. A lot.”

Mercedes giggles into his chest. Her voice is muffled when she says, “I love you a lot, too.”

* * *

Sylvain wakes up to fingernails lightly scraping lines up and down his arm.

Mercedes jerks backwards when his eyes crack open, like she’s been caught doing something wrong. “Oh—good morning. I thought you were asleep.”

“I was,” he says, voice thick and groggy. “Nice way to wake up, though.” He blinks a few times to get the sleepy feeling out of his eyes. With each blink, he feels a bit more human and sits up when he feels human _enough_. Mercedes has not moved, nor has she blinked. She is, however, staring straight at his bare chest.

He’s really not awake yet. Something, some dream about being a kid making promises and fighting dragonflies lingers still. “See something you like?” his mouth supplies out of habit.

“Um.”

The tone of her voice baffles him. It doesn’t sound like Mercedes-in-the-morning, or at least not the Mercedes he’s grown accustomed to. One slow blink her way proves it’s still his wife beside him, however.

Another slow blink proves her eyes are darker than the dawn-glimmering room can excuse, and that she’s shifting in her nightgown so that her thighs rub together. And that she’s probably unaware she’s doing so.

And Sylvain thought _he _usually wakes up with a painful hard-on.

He’s still not really out of his dream, and is rather uncertain if he’s even left it, but he can’t resist bending down and murmuring, “Um…?”

Time freezes. Mercedes’s pupils are blown huge and her breaths come in short little pants. Her lips are parted like she’s about to speak, _or_ _let him plunge his tongue in her mouth_, or kiss him, _or slide under, under, under the covers and swallow his cock_, but bending down like this makes his pillow closer, and Sylvain’s feeling a bit lustful for it, too.

“I had a dream,” she squeaks, breaking time’s spell.

“A dream, huh?” Sylvain gives in and sinks back to the pillow. It’s even softer than he remembers. Mercedes’s breath quickens with his new, closer proximity. “Must’ve been a really good dream.”

“Yes.” Sylvain’s looking at her through heavily-lidded eyes. He’s so sleepy. He can barely see Mercedes’s hair except for the blond locks pressed against her own pillow. “I…”

“Mm? You…?” He’s waking up more with each word. So is another part of him. But the pillow…the childish promises…the dragonflies were so blue…

“I’m calling for a bath!” Mercedes races out of bed, and he makes a plaintive noise when cold morning air rushes in. But the covers soon settle around him again, wrapping him back in a nice cocoon of warmth. It’s not as cozy as when Mercedes is there, but warmth is warmth, and he falls asleep once more without much trouble.

An even warmer, Mercedes-shaped body joins him under the sheets at some point. Sylvain’s arms wrap around her on instinct and pull her tightly against him. She hums in satisfaction and nuzzles into him.

“Is it a holier hour now?” he mumbles into her hair. “Have the dark and lust-filled thoughts vanished with the arrival of divine sunlight?”

“Oh, you’re just terrible!” Her embarrassed outrage is the most hilarious thing to a half-asleep man, and her small fists bang against his chest, which is shaking with laughter. “I was trying not—I had to—_Sylvain_—“

“You tried to _seduce _me. Man, I can’t let my guard down around my own wife, huh? Trying to get me to put my dick in her when I’m _vulnerable_—“

“Syl_vain_.” Now she does push him back, and he cracks his eyes open a second time to see her disapproving frown. And her blush. Mostly her frown, but the blush is fun, too. “Please don’t say such things of me.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” And he is, after a second’s worth of reflection. “Bad joke. Old habits die hard. I _never _see you that way. Come here.” He opens his arms for her again, and she doesn’t hesitate before burrowing into them again. Her hair is damp and smells nice. “You know what other way I don’t see you, though?”

“What’s that?”

Her voice is so sweet and soft. Sylvain hates to ruin it, but…

“Haven’t seen you in the bath yet. Sounds like you have a great time without me there and I’m _dying _to know—”

Mercedes pushes him away for real this time and flounces out of bed with great scandalized “hmph!”s and “_really _now”s and “our carriage is probably here by now”s while he howls with laughter. His laughter’s not quite died down even when she comes back from behind the dressing screen, and it only starts up again—smoother and deeper this time—when he sees her face.

She doesn’t look scandalized_ enough_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thank you as always for your kind, kind words!!! The chapters come easy bc who knew having clear ideas=organized progress, but they come even easier bc y'all make me feel so good. Sorry to keep gushing, but really, you guys know how to compliment a kid. what the hell
> 
> Anyway. Reminder not to read this at work--in case the very first sentence of Chapter One of the entire friggin fic wasn't enough of a reminder. This PSA comes to you directly from someone known to read smut on the metro during LA's notorious rush hour, but...

* * *

“I am going to die alone.”

“A gorgeous girl like you? I really doubt that. Even if your title and pretty little face weren’t enough, you’ve got personality the same size as your—“

Hilda flicks his forehead, and Sylvain shuts up. “No one cares about my _title_, least of all me! It’s my big brother who’s got to handle all that nonsense. No, even that won’t help me land a man to have and to hold.” Her voice is singsonglike. Hilda’s fresh out of a breakup—which she initiated—and the fellow’d had the misfortune to be from Fhirdiad, where Sylvain is now.

“Hilda, I say this as a peer, and not as someone who’s terrified of your brother, but…” Sylvain swallows some of his brandy. “What if your brother dies? You’re still a Goneril.”

He’s waiting for another flick or at least a gasp of outrage, but Hilda only snorts. “Please. _My _brother? No way! Even so, he’d claw out of the grave if he heard his little baby sister had to take on the world alone!” She can pull a quavering voice out of nowhere. Sylvain respects that.

He likes Hilda.

“Anyway.” She stretches for dramatic effect, then reclines on the settée like she’s ready to be engulfed by its throw pillows. “It’s not exactly like there’s an _Alliance _anymore. Not really a territory to ‘rule’ or whatever. Kind of frees me up a bit, right?” She bats her eyelashes at him, and Sylvain winks back and refills their glasses.

Hilda isn’t one of the girls who saw through him, really. Not entirely. But beyond a little healthy Hilda-style flirting, she was never truly interested, and his initiatives were pretty equally performative. It means she can barge uninvited into his guest quarters in the royal palace and start pouring herself a drink without any fear of misunderstanding from anyone.

Well. _Hilda _probably assumes that’s what makes it okay.

“Thank you, dearest,” she says to the refilled glass he hands her. “Well, enough about me and my boring love life. How’s domesticity treating you?”

Sylvain takes his time drinking, pondering how best to reply. Is Hilda a safe person to confide in? Because his childhood friends certainly aren’t. “Well, their Majesties are pretty good hosts when they’re not standing around blushing at each other,” he hedges.

“Coy’s not a good look on you.” Hilda kicks him under the table, and he yelps. The girl’s wearing _heels_. “I helped Mercedes with that dress for hours, you know. The least you could do is tell me how I did! Goddess knows I can’t pry any juicy deets from that woman.”

Sylvain blinks. “Which, the dress from Felix’s wedding?”

Yes, of course, what _other _dress could Hilda have helped out with?

The disappointed, judgmental look on her face echoes those thoughts. “Oh, sweetie. If ‘coy’ doesn’t look good, neither does ‘dumb.’ Come on, work with me.” When he takes too long to respond—which in Hilda-time means three heartbeats—she gasps. “Unless—was she right after all?”

_Now _she has Sylvain’s full attention. His heart leaps into his throat, and his grip around his glass tightens. “Right about what?”

“Well, don’t you sound desperate for details.”

“‘Coy’ isn’t cute on you, either.” Sylvain shoots back, failing to keep annoyance out of his tone.

“Everything is cute on me! But…maybe I should have trusted Mercedes’s tastes. She wanted to go with more…” Hilda gestures to her body and wiggles her hips—what does _that_ mean? “But I told her baby steps, you know, don’t go all out, not too out-of-character, just a little tease, a little flash…”

Sylvain’s mouth has gone dry. He can barely see the chattering lady in front of him. He’s not even sure what image is trying to form in his mind’s eye, but it’s definitely something distracting.

Hilda shrugs, slumping back in her seat again. “But I guess _teasing_’s not your taste after all. Poor, predictable Sylvain!”

“What,” Sylvain laughs in disbelief, “Mercedes wanted to come to her bestie’s wedding in ribbons and owl feathers and literally nothing else, huh?” Just saying the words makes his glass of brandy shake on its way to his mouth.

Hilda’s hesitation in replying doesn’t help, either. “I mean…”

Sylvain spits his latest sip back into the glass. “_What_.”

“I mean, no one _only _wears ribbons and feathers—“

“_Hilda_.”

Hilda raises her hands in surrender. “Fine, fine, look. You know she’s fashionable! But she doesn’t know, like, _sexy_-fashionable super well, or that it doesn’t mean wearing, like, _nothing_. You can’t very well show up to a wedding amongst the peerage in an open-backed gown, can you? No matter how ‘modest’ a drop or happy your marriage.”

Sylvain’s not been a stranger to fucking his hand these past few moons, but the mishmosh of confused images flying around his mind right now are doing a faster job of making him go blind. “You are _so _making fun of me.”

“Sylvain, honey, I have so many better ways of making fun of you. Such as the fact that you’re _married to a priest_. Did you ever, I don’t know, consider that’s hilarious on its own?”

It kind of is.

“That’s not the point!”

Hilda gives him a look, drains her glass, and swaps her empty one with his full, still in his hand.

“I spat into that, you know.”

“I’ve had worse.” Sylvain’s not really in the mood for dirty jokes right now. “Just tell me it at least came off easily, okay? I don’t know what I’d do if Mercedes proved me wrong about _another _thing. I don’t know how much dignity I have left when it comes to her.”

Sylvain’s trying to figure out how best to phrase “I’m not sure about my dignity either, but yes, Mercedes probably had an easy time undressing for bed on her own” in the least damning way possible, but the Hilda-attention-span timer goes off. He is treated to another of her horrified, gleeful gasps.

“_No_.”

Sylvain scrambles for excuses. “It wasn’t _our _special day.”

“Weddings get people horny!”

“It’s not like we were in private; we were in guest chambers.”

“Says the man who fucked a gardener behind the Knights’ Hall between classes!”

“Okay, first of all, it was just my mouth, and—“

“—I shouldn’t know _either _of these things—“

“—second of all, we…we hadn’t, uh, we were tired!”

“Sylvain, you’re a literal machine. Your Lance is far from Ruined.”

He quirks a brow. “Is that a Relic joke?”

“It’s a Relic joke.”

“It’s not very funn—“

“Have you and Mercedes not slept together?”

He waves an ice-cold hand towards the bedroom in what he hopes is a blasé gesture. “Every night.”

“In the _traditional _sense.”

“We’re married, right?” Sylvain can’t figure out why this is so hard to say. He could just come out and admit it. Hilda hasn’t known him as a ten-year-old hitting on scarecrows, or been a tagalong kid whining at him for attention and swordfights. Any teasing she’d give him would be mild, just as mild as she’s done so far.

Besides, it’s not a big thing. It’s just _sex_. Sex is easy. He’s lost count of how many times he’s done anything even tangentially related. Lost count years ago. Women ago.

Maybe it’s hard to admit because it _should _be easy to him, familiar, simple.

And it’s not. And he doesn’t want it to be.

Hilda thumps her palm on the table, and he jumps. Her eyes are dead serious when she says quietly, “Has your penile region penetrated her nether parts?”

Sylvain loses it.

“What,” he finally manages to choke out when his laughter dissolves into wheezes, wiping his streaming eyes, “what does that even _mean_?”

Hilda has remained regal and poised during his fit of hysterics, but when she speaks, it’s through pinched lips that tell him she’s trying not to laugh, too. “It seemed like I had to be very specific with you, and I thought I should use clear scientific terminology.”

“_‘Clear scientific_’—“

“This is like pulling teeth. So, no. Your dick has not been inside of her.” Sylvain’s laughter dies, and Hilda pushes again. “In any capacity?”

He swallows. There’s nothing teasing in her tone, but there’s no concern for his sanity, either. It’s altogether unsettling.

“I’ve—She’s—We have a lot of things to work through together,” he says in a thick voice. Brandy has never sounded like such a great idea before.

Hilda nods, like he’s said something wise. “Hey, at least it’s together, right? You’re both used to doing things on your own.”

* * *

Mercedes’s long blonde hair sifts through his fingers. Soft, thick, easy to pull. Sylvain tugs it to make her smile, then again to make her moan. He bunches it in his fist and uses it to tilt her head back, bare her neck.

She’s wearing the Officers Academy uniform scarf for some stupid reason. He growls and it’s gone before he knows how he’s done it. She laughs and tries to reach for him, pull him close, but he grabs her wrists in both hands and shoves her against the Goddess Tower wall. A wyvern knight patrol flies by with warning screeches. Sylvain stops, but he’s still forcing Mercedes to the wall, and he can’t move his fingers from her wrists. Her nails dig deep into his lower back.

The Professor dismounts and strolls over, easy, casual, calm.

“You enjoy spying on people, Your Excellency?” Sylvain snorts, tossing Mercedes’s bishop cap from her head. He’s talking to the Professor, but he can’t look away from Mercedes, because she’s unbuttoning the front of her dress with her eyes fixed on his face. The closer he tries to get, the more she backs away. But the buttons click-click-click free, one at a time.

“You’re being a jerk,” the Professor says with a knowing wink to Mercedes. Sylvain gives the man a black glare and shrugs off his shirtsleeves.

“Am I being a jerk, sweetheart?” he croons to Mercedes, down on her knees before him, ribbons and feathers in her hair. His fingers are tight around her jaw when he repeats, “Am I? Or does his Excellency just like to spy?”

Mercedes’s hair is easy to grab like this, to force her mouth over, then onto his leaking cock. But she doesn’t need much encouragement—not that Sylvain was planning on giving her much of a choice in the matter anyway. She swallows him from tip to base, moaning deep in her throat. The vibrations make him shudder, grip the bedsheets for safety, for purchase.

Her hair’s too short to wrap around his wrist, to fuck her face. He doesn’t want to hurt her, even though she’s whimpering and touching herself while she sucks him off like his seed’ll be the elixir of life. He tries to slow down, to go gentle. But her lips release him with a wet pop.

“Fuck me,” she commands. Her eyes are huge, dark, lips swollen. Her naked body is hard to see, mostly because he doesn’t think he’s supposed to look upon it. So he glances away.

“I can’t.”

“You can. Not tonight, but now. Fuck me.” Mercedes tugs him down, on top of her, wraps her legs around his waist. She’s absolutely soaked. “Fill me up, babe.”

“I can’t.”

“_You can_. Come here. Inside me.”

With a tortured groan, Sylvain sinks into her and wakes up drenched in sweat.

His heart is racing, his balls are tight, and they’re both ready to explode.

Mercedes—_the real Mercedes, he’s never been so grateful_—stirs next to him, and Sylvain makes a break for the washroom before he frantically masturbates under the covers to the thought—the fantasy—of something like _that _when she’s _right there_.

“Good dream?” Mercedes mumbles to him when he comes back, nauseated in his afterglow. Her tone is teasing, her fingers light across his chest, and she’s not awake enough to see him flinch away from her feather-soft touch.

“Not really.”

* * *

Sylvain can’t be in the same room as her.

The blond wisps curling around her ears—_He bunches it in his fist, tilts her head back, bares her neck._

The rustle of her court-appropriate new dresses—_She unbuttons the front, eyes fixed on his face._

The way she laughs—_She swallows him, tip to base, moans deep from her throat_.

The breathy sound of her voice—_Fill me up, babe_. _Come inside me._

Her affectionate pats are easy to avoid, the little casual gestures she’s grown comfortable with in public. All Sylvain must do is say something colorful enough to offend Ingrid or, on one particularly desperate occasion today, Dimitri, and he’ll find himself having a reason to move away from her and dodge a blow from someone else.

It’s going to be harder to avoid her when they’re alone.

But for now, he’s busy. It’s their first official day in Fhirdiad, because yesterday, Sylvain hung out with Hilda and Mercedes spent the day baking with Ashe and Dedue. This means today, Sylvain’s mostly stuck in court with his father discussing the latest tensions with Sreng. During the recesses and luncheon, there were enough people to catch up with that it didn’t seem too odd for Sylvain to be mingling.

But the courtly conversation at dinner’s almost over. They’ve planned to spend tomorrow exploring the capital while the rest of the family returns home.

And Sylvain will be left alone with his wife, unwilling, unable to tell her he can still get himself off to the thought of fucking her into submission, like an interrogation. He can still get himself off to the fantasy that she doesn’t love him.

* * *

Mercedes isn’t in their guest quarters when Sylvain slinks back from the barracks. He releases a way bigger sigh than he thought he was holding in. Wine and cards with Alois and Cyril and some other new Knights of Seiros was a great excuse to stay away. They’re all people who like to drink and relax and not care too much, but none of them know him well enough—or at all—for him to risk spilling any secrets once alcohol lowered his inhibitions.

Sylvain’s sobered up enough to find his way back to the guest wing without having to ask anyone for directions. This means he was lost for quite some time, yes, since he kind of remembers how standing to leave had been a shaky affair. But it also means his nerves had time to catch up with him. Finding Mercedes absent is a bigger relief than it should be.

It’s such a relief, in fact, that his inhibitions are lowered even further, and he doesn’t stop to wonder about her whereabouts if she’s not even in bed.

What Sylvain does wonder is if there’s any water left in the washroom, or if he’s going to have to make an embarrassing decision between calling for more or going to bed with wine still coating his mouth. With the warning bells of a headache ringing at the edges of his skull, he lurches toward its door and pushes it open.

A flash of blue light whizzes towards his face, and Sylvain’s aching head slams against the doorframe to avoid it. The sweet, acrid smell of singed flesh informs him he wasn’t fast enough; the spell has kissed the curve of his left ear.

“Oh! Oh, no! You didn’t knock! I’m so—“

Sylvain’s heart leaps into his throat, and he squeezes his eyes shut, like she’ll vanish again, leave him and his sick guilt in peace. His head, his ear barely twinge. “You weren’t in the room. I thought…”

“I was here, in the bath! Let me—“ Water sloshes from somewhere to his left.

_The bath_.

“I’m, I’m fine, don’t, I’m fine!” Sylvain’s waving his hands around like he’s a little kid blocking punches. But he can’t open his eyes, he _won’t_. He doesn’t know what he’ll do to her if he sees her, just standing in the bath, dripping water snaking down her body, rivulets of water between her breasts, trickling down, and down, and down glistening skin, bare to the knees, water lapping at her legs, hand outstretched, white magic glimmering on the tips of her slender fingers, blond brows pinched together, eyes wide with surprise and concern, pouty lips parted, spouting apologies…

When had he opened his eyes?

“Mercedes.”

His voice is a growl, and Mercedes’s shudder is so violent he can see it across the small tiled room.

Because while it’s deep and hoarse and full of _want_, it’s not seductive. Not a growl, really; not a purr, nothing enticing or playful. It’s a snarl, or something else feral and unhinged and a _warning_.

Mercedes understands that last part, at least. Or he thinks she does, because with all the cautious slowness she’d give a trapped wounded animal, she sinks back into the tub once more. Sylvain watches her descend into the bubbles with unabashed, desperate hunger.

_Not tonight. He can’t._

“Well, now you’ve seen me in the bath,” Mercedes laughs. If Sylvain can hear how forced it sounds, she must, too. “It’s very boring, as you can see. So that’s—“

“Liven it up for me.”

The words roll off his tongue like the smoothest, headiest honey. Mercedes’s breath catches. The sound echoes against the tiles, a thousand stuttered gasps battering his scorched ears.

It’s that starving, wild part of him from his best nightmares that smiles the order. But it’s the terrified creature inside himself who loves her that keeps him from moving closer. No, he stays by the door, in pain and in safety.

Sylvain doesn’t hear Mercedes swallow, but he sees it. A single drop of water caresses her neck with the movement and races down the dip between her clavicles. It vanishes into the rest of the bathwater hiding her breasts from his view.

He’s sober, but he wishes he weren’t. It’d give him a reason to cackle an apology, crack a joke, collapse on the bed not too far from where he is, and blot out this memory with the sweet sleep of the inebriated. But this way, he can’t take it back. He can make all the apologies he wants, but he’s running out fast, and he never had many to spare.

So he stares. Openly. But he doesn’t enter the room past the door. For one of the first times in his life, Sylvain’s being honest, and it’s in a moment of fear.

Mercedes takes a shaky breath. “How should we?”

Sylvain runs his tongue over his dry lower lip. “I don’t know.” He does. “How do you usually _liven things up _when I’m not here watching?”

Mercedes holds him captive with a long, searching, considering look. Sylvain knows he’s not imagining the desire in her eyes, but he’s also not imagining her own fear. She could be evaluating what she thinks he wants. Or what she wants. Or his state of mind, his sanity. Her safety.

Sylvain’s ear smarts. She’ll set him ablaze. He almost expects it, actually. He won’t even fight back. What a relief of a joke it will be—finally consumed by his burning lust. Ingrid will laugh her way through his funeral.

“What will you do?” Her voice is husky. White, sharp heat spikes straight down his groin.

“I’ll be here.”

“You’ll stay over there.”

“Yeah, I will.”

“But what—“

“I’ll just watch.” He flashes his teeth the way red wolves smile under their favorite moonlight. Each syllable in each of her questions comes out throaty, even in its nervousness. “I’ll stay right here. Don’t mind me at all.”

Mercedes searches for words through her labored breathing. The chilly nighttime air pricks the raw red skin of his ear, but inside the washroom, it’s stifling hot. Every piece of Mercedes he can see—and it’s so much, he has _never _seen this much—is bright pink. There are fewer bubbles in the water now than there were when he first barged in, and he wonders if his brash entrance startled them away—

“What if I want you closer? Will you still stay away?”

Sylvain twitches in surprise. He hisses when his ear brushes the wooden doorframe, and before Mercedes can do something truly foolish like hurry over to heal him again, he replies, “I won’t move.”

He doesn’t deserve the respect, that pride shining in Mercedes’s blue eyes. But it soothes the feel of the agonizing words he’d forced his lips to form. She nods and leans her head onto the edge of the tub. Her eyelids slip shut.

“Do you want to talk to me?” The tiled room amplifies her whisper. Sylvain’s glad for it. He doesn’t trust himself much as it is, but he definitely wouldn’t trust any justifications of walking in simply to _hear her better_.

“Always. What do you want to talk about?” She’s still, save the rise and fall of her now-submerged chest. Sylvain stares at it anyway and tries not to imagine her own fingers tracing her nipples. He tries not to imagine her nipples, either.

“I want to hear about you.” Sylvain hums a question. “What do you think I do in here? To…have a livelier bath.”

Mercedes’s “temptress” voice is rife with trembling and uncertainty, but edged in hope and desire. It’d be rude of him not to let her know she’s doing quite well.

_It’d be rude of him not to make her scream for him, cut her begging short with one hard _thrust—

“I think you start off slow.”

“Slow?”

“I think it starts with the back of your neck, when you’re washing your hair.” Mercedes exhales with a shiver, and there’s no going back. “When you run your hands through your wet hair and your nails scratch that spot—yeah, honey, you know right where I mean.” Mercedes has drawn a straight wet line with her pointer finger just to the side of the nape of her long, pale neck. Sylvain shifts against the doorframe but otherwise doesn’t move. “Remember when we found that field of—“

“Sunflowers, yes—“

“Mhm, and the wind blew and you got petals in your hair?” His voice drops in pitch, even though he doesn’t mean for it to. “_Everywhere_?”

Leaves, petals, thorns from who-knew-where…Sylvain had laughed to see the usually-prim Mercedes squealing and struggling to pull all manner of plants from her wrecked coiffure. He’d reached over to offer another set of innocent fingers to the excavation task, but he’d scraped _that spot _they hadn’t yet known about, and when, with petals falling on her cheeks, she’d _moaned_, they’d…

“I remember.” Mercedes’s head falls back again, but she’s slid deeper under the water now.

“Do you remember it a lot?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah?” Sylvain stares at the bathwater like he’s waiting for Saint Seiros herself to step out of it. “What else do you remember when you’re in here?”

“Ah, a lot of things, but,” she opens her eyes and steals a peek at him, but flushes scarlet when their eyes meet, like she hadn’t actually expected the intensity on his face, “it’s more interesting for me to know what _you _think I do.”

_A lot of things, huh_?

Sylvain chuckles. “Glad you value my opinion so much.”

“I value _you_.”

Sylvain’s painful erection isn’t sure how it feels about tender emotions right now, so he doesn’t press the issue even as his heart skips a beat. “Let’s see,” he muses, settling against the door, “your neck. Yeah, there. I think you start off there and try to tell yourself that’s where it ends. But then you remember that day in the field, and your hands go _down_.”

“Here?” Mercedes’s upper arms twitch, the bathwater splashes, and even though Sylvain can’t see where her hands went or what they’re doing, he digs his fingernails into the wood behind him to keep some sort of control.

“Whoa, hey, no, I said you take it slow, right?”

Mercedes still won’t open her eyes, but her grin is positively cheeky. “Maybe I’m just correcting what you _think _I do.”

Sylvain didn’t survive a frozen well in a forest, five and a half years of a world war, and that one girl’s brother’s pitchfork just to die in front of his wife’s occupied bathtub.

“But you value my opinion, right?”

“Mhm.” The water splashes again, but it sounds like her hands have ascended from…wherever they were. This is not as helpful a realization as he would have hoped. “So how far down do you think they go?” Another splash, and her hands reappear, palms up in supplication.

“Your collarbones.” She obediently crosses her arms and traces the dip in her skin with her fingers. “Sliding down, a little more—“ still crossed, her palms rest on her skin just above the water, he can see her breathing quicken—“your breasts. One in each hand, just, you know, little strokes underneath. Underneath,” he repeats through gritted teeth, past the soft _splash_, because he knows _quite enough _about women’s bodies to guess her fingers are circling a little higher than he’d said.

“Should I show you?”

Her voice is very quiet. Breathless already, but quiet. Mercedes’s eyes have opened a slit, but she’s looking at him askance, not head-on. Cheeks pink, dark damp hair slick against her forehead, tongue flashing out to wet her lips…

_Whimpering, touching herself, sucking him off like his seed’ll be the elixir of life—_

It takes all of Sylvain’s willpower to shake his head. “Nah, we’re imagining what you do when I’m _not _here, aren’t we?”

There’s laughter in her voice when Mercedes agrees, “I suppose we are. Can I…” She pauses, changes her mind about something, and opens her eyes completely, awaiting further directions.

Okay, still, Sylvain won’t let her off _that _easy. “Can you…?”

Mercedes swallows, suddenly and unexpectedly embarrassed. “I want…ah, it’s nothing.” Sylvain thinks he has a pretty good idea of what she wants, but then he notices the most ripples and splashes come from where she’s left her hands.

He _could_ tease. Try to make her say it. She would definitely find it immature at best, troubling at worst.

Slow. They’re going slow.

And not just for his sake.

Sylvain pinpoints the moment she realizes he’s understood and, before the beginnings of a disapproving frown can even wrinkle her brow, drawls, “I think you brush your fingers over your pretty little nipples.”

Mercedes sighs, closing her eyes again. “My thumbs,” she murmurs, embarrassed flush gracing her cheeks again. Sylvain struggles not to laugh. Or loosen his very, very tight and increasingly uncomfortable pants.

“Got it. Thumbs. Hard?”

“Light,” Mercedes disagrees. Her head nestles against the corner of the tub in what is clearly a familiar pose. The sight of her falling into this unconscious, comfortable pattern isn’t one meant for people like him. Her eyes remain shut, she’s breathing slow and heavy, and it’s just from soft thumbstrokes on her nipples like he’s not even there. Like he _shouldn’t _be.

Mercedes peeks at him again. Her smile sears him. “I start out gentle.”

His ear means very little when the rest of him is suddenly on _fire_.

“Fuck,” Sylvain chokes out. “When do—“

“A little later,” she admits. She does—something—and the softest little moan slips out. “And if I think about, ah…” She shudders, stops. Sylvain’s about to repeat himself when her hand splashes again and goes to lower, even more unseen depths. And while it’s still moving, it’s still slow, _gentle_…”I think about the…parlor, against the window.”

“Yeah?”

Sylvain thinks about it, too. Her tiny wrist trapped in his grip. Her sleeves destroyed. Her mouth—swollen, bloody, bitten. Her voice, pleading for more, begging for him, his _name_.

“You held me, and…you were laughing when you kissed me. And you, the shape, I mean, the feel of your face in my hands…I imagine if…” Mercedes gasps and cuts herself off by sinking her teeth into her lower lip. She dips lower into the water, and the splashing changes in pace and rhythm.

Sylvain can’t help it. He leans forward, shoulders off the doorframe, trying to get a better look. But there are still a few bubbles left, and the tub’s too far anyway, too safe. “What’re you imagining?” Mercedes only shakes her head. She’s bright pink from head to…well, neck at this point, but he can tell her hips are jerking, seeking something that he can’t and won’t give her and that she won’t use words to describe.

His predatory vantage point supplies some good reasonable guesses, however, and Sylvain can _imagine _plenty on his own. “Mercedes,” he murmurs, “how many?”

“Huh?” She doesn’t stop, but her pace slows enough for her to ask that one word around her tiny moans.

Sylvain, however, doesn’t speak. He holds up one finger, keeps it stationary in front of his lips, and when he’s sure she’s watching, lowers his heated gaze to her lower half. He sticks out the tip of his tongue, presses it gently to the pad of his finger, and raises an eyebrow.

Mercedes squeaks in comprehension, which makes him bite a grin around the finger, but she shakes her head furiously. Sylvain flicks up a second finger and slides his tongue between the two. When he makes an inquisitive hum, she nods with equal embarrassment and speed. His answering laugh sounds pretty evil even to his own ears.

“Hm. So that’s what ‘gentle’ looks like for Mercedes von Martritz, huh?”

“No!” her chastising gasp takes him by surprise, and Sylvain slides his fingers back down to grip the doorframe. “No, I…ah, this is…not.” Mercedes’s hand, or maybe hands, have slowed. “For me.”

And for once tonight, Sylvain’s self-hatred is overtaken by how much he loves how _cute _she is. His fear of hurting her usurped by his desire to take their time. His rabid need to shred her inexperience tempered by his overwhelming excitement to make her feel good. To let her know how much he wants her, this, _her_.

It’s only a moment. But it’s a good moment. And when it passes, the fear and the hatred and the rage is kept at bay by wanting to see her face when she falls apart in front of him. To the thought of him.

“Got it, I got it. I like that.” What Sylvain meant for a casual exhale comes out as a rushing hiss. His fingers are trembling again, and his ear still feels warm. “So. What does ‘coming apart in a bathtub while her husband watches patiently’ look like for Mercedes von Martritz?” Mercedes moans low in her throat, and Sylvain’s voice drops an octave again. “Because I _really _wanna see what it looks like on her.”

She won’t look at him anymore, but it’s totally worth it to see her gasping so fast and writhing under the water, hidden from him in water that must not be warm anymore. She’s closer than he thought, and Sylvain never would have expected that kind of teasing to get to her, but maybe its shock value was precisely why it did.

“Come on, Mercedes,” Sylvain murmurs, eyes never leaving the tub, or the flashes of skin he’s treated to, “please show me. Please. I want to see. I want to see what your face looks like when you come undone.”

One hand shoots out of the tub and grips the edge so hard her fingernails turn white. “Sylvain,” Mercedes cries, and when she curls forward and arches her spine, her breasts splash out from the bubbles for one heart-stopping, tantalizing second.

They’re perfect, which he figured he’d think, but most importantly, there are three small freckles dotting the soft skin just above her right areola, and Sylvain now knows there is something sweet in life he _really _needs to properly savor, to taste.

Mercedes cries out again, then collapses back into the water. Both hands now rest on the tub, almost slipping off, and except for the labored sound of her breathing, she’s the very image of peace.

Sylvain composes himself first, mostly because he doesn’t think he can stay in these pants for one more minute without wanting to die. “Not too cold in there?”

“No,” Mercedes mumbles, like she’s in a dream. “I like when it’s cold.”

It’s not _fair_.

Sylvain manages to compose himself a second time, but now he’s not really sure what to do. This feels…different. He’s dirty-talked before. He’s fucked girls in the bath before. He has probably done both but can’t recall a specific instance at the moment.

All he can remember is the shape of Mercedes’s mouth, the flush on her cheeks, the way her eyes widened huge and blue when she came around her own fingers in the bathtub, sobbing his name.

So he gets her a towel instead. And looks away when she thanks him and gets out to dry off.

He’s about to crack a joke about livening things up on his own now when he feels cold, soft lips peck his cheek and cool healing magic on his ear like a blessing. Mercedes’s eyes crinkle with her glowing smile. “You’re so wonderful. I’m really lucky to have you love me.”

And off she dances to bed with a reminder not to take _too _long, because she knows he’s pent-up, but he did promise to show her his favorite places in Fhirdiad tomorrow.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Huh, guess you all aren't like Mercedes and you like your baths hot...kbyethat'sliterallyall

Sylvain’s taken extra care to keep Mercedes away from his old haunts in Fhirdiad. The sweets shop with an endless line trailing out the door and its wide selection of chocolate sets for any occasion from first dates to apology gestures? No. The flower shop always so discreet about where his gifts were being delivered on which days and what medicinal herbs ordered after? No. The angelica-specializing cafe with the tiny patio and little gated fence, perfect for spotting conquests and jealous boyfriends—or girlfriends—from a good distance with a handy escape route or grand entrance, as necessity dictates? No.

It’s a good thing Sylvain’s spent enough time bored in Fhirdiad growing up while his father was in court, because he has plenty of simpler, equally interesting activities to propose. Hoods pulled up, cloaks brushing against the rougher-spun wool of the common folk, they weave through the spice market, sampling dried seeds from Dagda and herbs from eastern Fódlan and not asking what the dried meat from Brigid is. She likes the royal hothouse as much as he’d hoped, although that could be in part due to the chilly weather; even so, he can’t blame the humidity for the flush rising to his cheeks when she strokes the bright petal of a sunflower with the tip of her finger and fixes him with an evaluating stare. Mercedes also proves to have a pretty good head for numbers at the horse races, but she can’t bear to watch the jousts. She doesn’t explain why.

“What a wonderful end to this trip,” she chirps while the grooms fetch the carriage. Her shoulders pop when she stretches, and she swings her arms around her skirt while she talks. “What a shame everyone was all so busy. I miss our friends.”

Sylvain shrugs. “You know them. They never take any time for themselves. Probably bored with boredom.”

“Hm, quite. Annie told the Archbishop much the same thing.”

The carriage rattles down the drive to them. A groom hops to attention and offers his arm to Mercedes. She ignores him save for a kind smile and climbs through the open door on her own. Sylvain claps the uncomfortable man on the shoulder with a grin of his own and follows. The carriage lurches forward once the door clicks shut.

“It’s his job, you know. He’s going to think he’s in trouble.”

Mercedes claps a hand over her mouth with a little gasp. “Oh, no! I only meant I didn’t need any help! I didn’t see why it was necessary. Oh, dear.”

But now that’s got Sylvain thinking. He’d found it funny at first, the little things Mercedes found ridiculous about the more powerful Houses. And while some of those little things exist for good reasons—they’d had a long sit-down conversation on how hiring a large team of seamstresses to tailor her wedding dress wasn’t a burden on anyone and it was better to put coin in the hands of their people than have her do it all herself—it’s others she points out that make him question their use.

The groom’s probably sweating in the wintry air right now, wondering if he’s about to get sacked for some offense he can’t remember committing. All because Mercedes felt perfectly happy to swing into the carriage without help. It doesn’t seem terribly fair.

“Funny how often ‘good breeding’ ends up ruining other people who were unlucky enough to be born, too,” he mutters, chin in hand, cheek against the window.

“Pardon?”

“Ah, just mumbling to myself.” He sighs and crosses his arms, leaning back into the cushions. Mercedes is sitting prim and pretty on the other seat. It’s a carriage, not a very large enclosure, but the space next to him feels empty and lonely out of nowhere. “You’re not cold?”

“Not particularly.” The carriage rocks over a bump, and the tip of her boot knocks his. “Even in the Empire, I never really minded being cold.”

Sylvain has tried his very best to keep last night’s adventures in the washroom far from his mind, considering today had been about _avoiding _memories of sexual escapades. So it’s her fault, really, when he purrs, “Oh? I thought it was more that you like it when it’s cold?”

Mercedes, apparently mid-inhale, suffers a severe coughing fit. Sylvain fumbles for the glass bottles of water under the seat, and when she’s recovered, she’s pink enough and stuttering enough that he actually feels a little bad and changes the subject to Duscur cooking.

* * *

“Yes, the market district’s schoolchildren wanted to see a statue of her, but all the chapels in town won’t let them spend even a half-day inside—in a house of prayer! Can you believe it? They’re only children!” The disgust in Mercedes’s voice could smite any sinner were she to will it.

“I didn’t know there even was a statue of Saint Cethleann outside the city. Where is this chapel?” Sylvain’s wracking his memory and coming up blank. Probably not much of a surprise, given his general lack of devotion or sense of decency, but he does at least consider himself reasonably well-versed on locations of potential political importance.

“Oh, not far. There’s a scarcely-used chapel of Saint Cethleann just outside the city walls, in the forest. Not very far in, don’t worry! We’ll be bundled up nicely. And we’ll be back before sundown.”

Mercedes continues rambling about how many guards are coming, and who, and what the children’s names are, and how repulsive it is of any person calling themselves a “priest” to turn away whoever shows up to pray simply for being of common stock, and _children _no less. Sylvain isn’t listening, and hasn’t even tried.

He remembers the chapel she’s talking about now. At the top of a steep, snowy hill, difficult for soldiers in clanky shiny armor to traverse. Searching for a lost little boy too scared to cry lest the tears freeze on his face. A chapel with a saint not too far away from desperate prayers, not close enough to answer any.

A cool hand on his cheek, and Sylvain jerks away in his chair. “Whoops,” he laughs way too late before Mercedes can do anything other than pinch her eyebrows together. “Guess I was lost in thought. Be careful, okay? And have fun with ‘em.” He winks and brushes his mouth over her half-parted lips and strides away from her confusion like he has a destination in mind beyond, well, _away_.

“My liege,” an unfortunate squire stammers when Sylvain rounds the corner of the training hall and nearly collides with the boy, “your—the Margrave Gautier has been looking for you.”

_Of course he has been_.

And of course he’s looking for his son _right now_.

“He give you a message for me?”

“Uh,” the squire squeezes his eyes shut and keeps his spine straight and stiff. Sylvain can see years of court training whirring behind the kid’s eyelids inside his brain. He waits for the kid to collect himself. The squire’s shoulders sag. “No. He didn’t.”

Sylvain blinks. “Oh. That’s a relief. He didn’t say why?”

“No. Sorry. No. I just remembered when I saw you. He didn’t tell me you had to see him right away!” the squire hastens to add, losing propriety in his panic. “Just, ah, he asked me if I’d seen his son, and I said I hadn’t, and I don’t know if he actually meant I should _tell _you he was looking for you, but he—“

“Relax, kid.” The kid does not relax. Sylvain offers his shoulder a couple firm pats, and he practically jumps out of his skin. “I have a feeling I know what he wants. Thanks for giving me the warning.”

The squire gulps and nods with wide, childlike, trepidatious eyes.

“Think you know a good secret hiding place? Somewhere a guy about my height, weight, and social status can hang out for a day?”

* * *

Sylvain winds up in the last room his father will enter, which is the alchemy laboratory. Sylvain himself doesn’t hang about this wing of the castle on a normal day, so it’s double the disappointment when a vaguely-familiar male voice calls his name from behind a bookshelf. But it’s not his father’s voice, so there’s still some good in the world.

“I thought that was you,” Linhardt drones when Sylvain rounds the corner. “You do have quite the swagger, don’t you?”

“If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” Sylvain winks. Linhardt’s blank gaze doesn’t waver.

“I don’t really know what ‘it’ is you’ve got, but whatever. At least you’re easy to identify. I was hoping to run into you.” He starts ambling around another shelf mid-sentence, and Sylvain trails behind.

“I didn’t even know you were in town.” He doesn’t know Linhardt very well, even though they’d both been Blue Lions eventually. Linhardt had abandoned his Adrestian title readily halfway through the war, which made others at the monastery distrust him, but the way he set to his tasks both in the war room and the infirmary with the same bored diligence meant results mattered, not motive.

Sylvain suspects Linhardt has never overthought his motivation either, since “motivation” is not a concept that seems to come easily to the man in the first place.

“Well, I am,” Linhardt replies to Sylvain’s not-quite question. “We’re on our way to Goneril territory and I figured I would stop by the Gautier laboratory to…yes, this one.” He pulls a thick green book from a shelf and a creepy-looking glass contraption from another. Sylvain waits while he flips pages and fiddles with dials.

“What’s in Goneril territory?” he asks when Linhardt seems to have forgotten his existence entirely.

“Oh, you’re still here.” Yep. Forgotten.

“It’s almost like we’re still in Castle Gautier or something.”

“Yes…” Linhardt mumbles. “And you’re a Gautier.”

The way he says it makes the hairs on the back of Sylvain’s neck prickle. “Unfortunately true.”

“Didn’t you and the von Martritz girl get married?” Sylvain has a bad feeling he knows where this is going. And it’s precisely the reason he’s here _hiding_.

“Linhardt, it’d be a great wedding present to me if you got to the point.”

Linhardt tucks the book into a bag at his hip without even asking permission. Sylvain can’t bring himself to care, whatever the book is—but he does put the contraption back on the shelf. “Why, I’m curious about what everyone else wants to know. I’m certain your father’s already started hounding you about the next heir. Sounds tiresome, but I’m of the same mind. Albeit to different ends.”

Sylvain clasps his clammy hands behind his neck and sneers. He can usually look down at people when he’s in this pose, but Linhardt’s rather tall, and it makes him feel self-conscious rather than impressive. “Oh? And is _your_ father begging you for a baby Cethleann in the Crest-oven, too?”

The schoolchildren can’t have made it to the chapel by now. It’s a long walk for long legs, and longer for short ones. It’s not snowing today, but it could at any moment. Water is always ready to freeze.

Linhardt raises delicately-arched eyebrows. “_My _father? My father’s dead. You should have known that.”

His father—

Linhardt’s father was the Minister of Domestic Affairs.

The _Empire_’s.

“The importance of passing down the Crest of Cethleann—or any Crest, really—it’s not limited to nobility,” Linhardt continues, like his previous three sentences bored him. Maybe they had. Maybe he’d forgotten them, too. “It’s for the sake of study. I’m surprised there aren’t more Crests of Gautier floating around the world thanks to your rather _spirited_ endeavors, Sylvain. But those days are behind you, of course; don’t misunderstand me.”

There’s no risk of that, because Sylvain doesn’t understand him in the first place. “I hope you enjoy your book,” he grits out. “Laboratory’s all yours. Take whatever you want.” He storms out—_swaggers_, apparently—with echoing memories screaming in his ears.

“I’ll tell what’s-her-name you said hello,” Linhardt’s voice manages to break through before the door slams shut. “Hilda, or whatever.”

* * *

Sylvain has had a very productive week.

He’s gathered forces and helped rout an entire bandit encampment—thieves the captain of the guard has been hunting for countless moons.

He’s drunk a lot of costly wine.

He’s made the rounds of almost all the town districts and their divisional heads, spending whole hours—hours!—outdoors and conveniently away from the Margrave.

He’s spent quality, squeaky-clean time with his wife.

“Would you care to, ah, keep me company? Again. To talk. In the bath.”

She’s endearingly terrible at this.

“You know I love talking to you,” he purrs, and he nearly catches her by fisting the front of her skirts in both hands, but Mercedes squeals and flies to the washroom before he can get a proper grip.

Everything he’s doing is what’s expected of the heir of a noble House, and the Margrave Gautier has nothing to complain about.

The Margrave Gautier’s probably assumed his son’s already done his noble duty dozens of times over, anyway. No need for him to know the specifics.

* * *

It’s not even the Margrave Gautier who actually corners him, however. It’s Sylvain’s mother.

“I do so like your wife,” she tells him one morning when he’s in the stables. Mother does not come to the stables often, but her favorite horse has thrown a shoe, and Sylvain has run into her checking on the mare. He’d been pleased to see her; he hasn’t, in fact, felt particularly trapped by his mother’s presence until just now.

“I like her too,” Sylvain’s mouth foolishly supplies in an unfortunate moment of emotional vulnerability. Mother’s smile widens like a cat mid-pounce.

“She’s such a sweet, gentle soul. I hope you’ve been careful with her.”

Sylvain laughs, taken aback. Mercedes has wiped tears from his eyes far more times than he’s been able to wink at her. If anyone’s heart is in danger of breaking, it’s his. “Sorry to give you the wrong idea about your son’s masculinity, but you should be asking her to be careful with _me_.”

Mother’s eyes dance. “Now, that’s a little more detail than I was expecting,” she says with a delicate little cough, “but I’m glad she’s taking to her new role with…enthusiasm. My boy always was a handsome one, of course.”

And abruptly Sylvain wants to vomit into the feed bucket.

“That’s not—“

Mother shoos him with the tips of her fingers, that same merriment making her cheeks glow. “Child, please. If ever there was a time for you to play the innocent, that time is long past.”

_There never _was _a time for your child to play the innocent_, Sylvain wants to roar at her. But manners, upbringing, ‘good breeding’ keep him stony and subservient while his mother advises him on optimal practices for higher likelihood of conception, “which probably goes against everything you’ve been perfecting your entire life, ha!”

By the time Sylvain manages to extract himself, politely, a heavy hollowness has replaced his stomach. Mother knows full well how many precautions he’d learned over the years, but of course there’s no reason she’d find such methods difficult to unlearn now that things are _proper _and he’s _married_.

Sylvain does not risk impregnating girls. He never has, to the best of his knowledge. He’d used medicinal tisanes and salves until Manuela told him they could result in permanent impotence, which didn’t sound too bad until he realized she didn’t just mean “sterile.” His sense of duty to his family—and, later, the memory of Miklan’s howls as the Lance of Ruin devoured what was left of his humanity—kept him from considering it anyway.

So no. Sylvain hasn’t finished inside a girl in years. Ages. Much to those girls’ severe disappointment.

And _now_ he’s not sure if he’ll ever want to with Mercedes. Because it’s not just Mercedes is not like the other girls, and he’s got to keep them separate from her as best he can…

But because Mercedes is not a broodmare and he is not a studhorse, much as the nobility would like them to believe.

* * *

Mercedes throws herself face-first onto the settée’s pillows the instant their sitting room door shuts and sighs.

“Hello to you too.” Sylvain’s fresh out of the bath in his favorite dressing robe and warming himself in front of the fireplace. The pillows jostle and emit a surprised yelp; the sigh-filled moment was apparently supposed to have been a private one. “You know, that’s not usually the kind of sigh you want to hear on pillows.”

“I’m sorry, just a long day. But what kind of sigh are you—?”

“Never mind.” He watches her clamber out of the pillow pile with difficulty. Mercedes is still in her outdoor attire, boots laced and cloak tied and gloves…gloved. “You’re a bit overdressed for the bedroom, aren’t you?”

Mercedes claps her hands over her face, and Sylvain quirks a brow before the severity of the comment hits him.

Mercedes has heard a dirty comment in an innocent sentence…_before Sylvain_.

He can’t even enjoy this exciting milestone in their marriage. He just feels queasy.

“I’m here if you wanna talk—uh, I can listen,” he scrambles for a different word. “Or do you want distraction?”

Felix, in addition to the official House Fraldarius wedding gift of a cavalry battalion and three moons’ worth of biweekly umbral steel deliveries, had given the two of them some complicated little board game from a traveling merchant. Annette had painted extra pieces herself—to_ brighten them up a bit, who wants just to _get wood_ for a wedding present, Sylvain, why are you laughing?_

Sylvain hasn’t played it yet, but it looks like it could snow any day now, and a cold night by a fireplace seems like a good time to try it.

“A distraction…yes, that might be nice.”

There’s a curious edge in Mercedes’s voice, accompanied by the _clunk_ of buckles and _snaps _of buttons and whisper of fabric falling to the floor.

_Oh._

Half of Sylvain wants to explain himself. That he has the board game on the table just behind him. That clearing bandits isn’t the same as tactical strategy and he can feel himself getting rusty. That he’s also had a stressful day—stressful ever since Fhirdiad, really—and _that _kind of distraction wasn’t what he’d meant. That maybe it’s not a good idea.

The other half wants to stay quiet in case she’s removed more than the travel gear.

That other half wins, because she _has_.

Sylvain’s had a relaxing and extremely uneventful bath tonight. He hadn’t been in the mood for anything more than blistering-hot water working at his tight, unhappy muscles. His favorite dressing robe was an additional source of soothing.

Now, all that means is he feels rather untouched, and the little he’s wearing can lead to an easy remedy for that.

Mercedes, in nothing but her shift, comes around the side of the chair and joins him on the rug in front of the fireplace. The yellow-red glow of fire illuminates her silhouette in the white linen. Sylvain swallows; her body is shadows and flickers of curves and muscles. His hands itch.

And one of her hands is on one of his. Fingers laced together.

Mercedes sighs again and settles next to him. She rests her head on his shoulder and cuddles close. Her hair pricks the skin on his jaw. “You look tense.”

“Less tense, now that I’ve got you here.”

He means for it to come out teasing and flirtatious. But he doesn’t remember to smile, and they both can hear that sobriety in his words.

The fire crackles and snaps in front of their bare toes. A charred log folds in on itself and rolls against the grate. Sylvain watches black bark flake up the chimney flue, idly remembering a terrible moment in Ailell when an Imperial mage had blasted him with miasma and knocked him sideways off his horse onto quaking, burning stone.

Mercedes strokes the top of his hand, like she can tell where his mind has wandered. Her breathing is regular, untroubled. Sylvain can’t see her expression from this angle, but her aura’s not exuding any distraught emotion. He shifts a little, and she lifts her head to look at him head on.

Maybe he wanted to understand what expression was really on her face. Maybe he wanted to ask her about her day. Maybe he wanted to tell her about his.

Or maybe they’d both just wanted to kiss. Either way, kissing’s what winds up happening. Gentle. Slow. Everything they’ve been saying they want.

Mercedes’s lips brush the corner of his mouth, once, twice, swapping to the other corner, repeating the pattern. Sylvain keeps trying to catch her in the middle, but not trying hard enough. He grins against her chin when she passes over his mouth again and nips the velvety skin there. When she gasps in surprise, he takes the opportunity to cup her face and bring her closer properly, to suck on her bottom lip.

Slow. Gentle. They’re just sitting. Sylvain’s fingers press lightly under her ears. Mercedes lets him hold her just like this, lets him roll her lower lip between his teeth. He watches her face change as he flicks his tongue across it, _once, twice,_ before releasing her.

Mercedes surges forward, and now it’s her fingers on his skin, her nails lightly scraping against the back of his neck. Sylvain shivers, and it’s not as gentle anymore, but the pace hasn’t changed. She presses leisurely, open-mouthed kisses against the underside of his jaw, inching down his neck. Her tongue swipes hard across _that _spot above his collarbone, and when he moans, his breath makes her earring quiver.

“I like hearing you,” she whispers into his skin, and his hands on her back grab two fistfuls of her shift to drag her closer. He could untie it this way. Her shift’s laces are literally within grasp. It’d take one quick tug, and she’d be practically naked in his arms.

_Slow_. Mercedes’s mouth trails up his neck again, but she’s freed his hand and is running her fingers up and down his chest. He’s still in his robe, but with her ministrations, the fabric over his chest is sliding open. With the first brush of her fingers on his bare skin, he moans embarrassingly loud and leans back on the floor, taking her with him.

“Guess you’re hearing me a lot tonight.”

“It seems so. I’m glad.” Mercedes beams, and if Sylvain were writing another stupid love poem to make her laugh, he’d say the firelight dims in response. But then her expression turns cautious, and her hand stays frozen midair. “Is it okay if I…”

She nods at his chest, which is much more exposed now. She’s sitting on his midriff, not his hips, but this still gives her easy access to the ties of his robe. Every time she breathes, Sylvain swears the robe opens more and more. He’s wearing his usual sleep attire underneath—which means soft trousers and nothing else—but this feels…intimate for some reason. The extra article of clothing, a new layer to remove, makes him feel _bare_.

Slow.

“_Please_.”

Mercedes leans over him to kiss him, hand and lips mere seconds from his skin, and he catches her fingers in his to stop her. “Just…slowly.”

She nods—slowly—and they’re kissing again. Deceptively lazy, soft licks against the roof of her mouth, shivering when her fingers brush close to his nipples. Sylvain wills his hands to remain above her waist, much as he wants to slam her hips on his, grind hard into that soaking-wet spot he _knows _he’ll find. The tension he feels in the lower half of her body is positively electric; Mercedes is trying to steady herself, too.

But they’re slow, somehow. Sylvain’s nails graze that part of her neck that always makes her shudder and whimper. Her hips jerk, and his soul leaves his body. His fingers want to _grab _and his cock wants to _thrust _but it’s easier than he fears to just laugh, to pull her closer, lick and coax the moans out of her mouth.

He can feel Mercedes exploring the skin on his chest with more heated curiosity than direct purpose, fingers wandering over jagged, ugly scars and corded muscle in random ways. Sylvain sleeps shirtless and always has, but he hasn’t given much thought until now that this isn’t something they’ve ever done.

He knows Mercedes watches him in the mornings, the ones when she’s fresh out of dreams where “restraint” isn’t a real word. Sylvain has always assumed it’s just the sight of him bare in any capacity that draws her eye, but…

He’s forgotten sometimes it’s nice just to touch and be touched.

“Four Saints—“ he gasps, and his hips jerk hard behind her before he can control himself.

Mercedes’s fingers retreat from his nipple, and the calculating look in her eyes sets his blood ablaze. “Good?” The word is husky, quiet.

“Yeah.”

She rolls the other nipple between her thumb and pointer finger, and that combined with the same studious expression she’s wearing has him groaning something wordless into his palm.

“You’re very beautiful like this,” she whispers, repeating the movement. Sylvain hisses a curse and wills his hips steady.

That part is easy, at least. He reminds himself to tell her later he hates being called beautiful. But it doesn’t matter right now.

“Kiss me,” he commands her, curling the backs of his fingers and smoothing them over her cheek. She leaves his nipples alone and bends over him, and he cuts her compliments short with his lips and teeth and tongue. Slowly.

“You’re shaking,” Sylvain observes after some time when she’s kissing past his jaw. He feels Mercedes open her eyes, eyelashes tickling his neck. He wraps his arms around her back and strokes her spine. “Everything okay?”

“Yes, marvelous. We just—“ Mercedes pauses, and Sylvain takes the opportunity to sit them both up. He helps her roll off his thighs before either of them can feel too much _below_. “We’ve never done that sort of thing before.”

Sylvain doesn’t reply save a vague hum. She’s right. For whatever reason, or whatever “that sort of thing” is, she’s right.

Mercedes laughs and puts her hands over her face. “Oh, my. I don’t know why I’m shaking!” Sylvain lifts one hand using her own wrist, but she yanks it away with another giggle and slaps it over her face again. “It’s so embarrassing!”

“_Embarrassing_? Why are you embarrassed?” Grinning, Sylvain reaches for her wrist again, but Mercedes jumps to her feet and dances away. The hem of her shift flutters in the last waves of heat from the fire. “Why’re you _embarrassed_?” Now he’s standing, too. Mercedes gives a little shriek and runs into the bedroom.

“I don’t know!”

A pillow hits his face when he stalks after her, and another misses and lands on the floor by the desk when he makes it to the edge of the bed. Mercedes is curled up by the headboard, bashful smile on her face. Abruptly, Sylvain is reminded of the last time he saw her in this pose, and although the context and mood is different, something guilty gnaws at the edges of his stomach.

Mercedes’s smile doesn’t fall, however, even when he collapses on his back and makes no further effort to chase her up the mattress. Cool fingers brush his hair from his forehead. “You can be so ridiculous sometimes.”

“Only ‘sometimes?’ Wow! I’ve improved! Tell the Professor!” Mercedes laughs again, and Sylvain closes his eyes while she continues stroking his hair. “What type of certification test d’you think I passed?”

“Hm. I’m not certain yet. I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

“Oh?” Interest renewed in the little game, Sylvain rolls onto his front and looks up at her through his lashes. “Didn’t realize it was _you _I was trying to please.”

It’s dark here without the fire, nothing for light except the half-moon through the windows. “Oh, well, you’re…excelling at that, actually.” He hears Mercedes swallow nervously and hopes she’s blushing. “I was, um, just making a silly—“

“Always room for improvement,” he quips, voice deep, slow, stroking. He stretches like a cat, and, before she can say—or do—anything, crawls up the bed to slide between the covers. “Let me know if you do think of something.”

While Mercedes changes into proper nightclothes, Sylvain unties his robe and tosses it to the floor. His heart is racing, full of so many emotions and justifications to sort through. Even the few minutes it takes for Mercedes to get ready and come back to bed are enough time for his anxieties and nausea to return.

How will they—

Can he even—

He wants—

Everyone _else _wants—

Mercedes’s even breathing makes a good metronome to the cacophony of his thoughts. Sylvain forces himself to sleep knowing full well he’ll find no reprieve. His dreams leave him floundering in mountain wells, a baby screaming at the Goddess, begging her to take him home.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to chop up this chapter and put it into the next because of word count, so, uh, sorry for many reasons, but the Day of Atonement is a good day to do that kind of thing, right?

Mercedes has almost finished cutting the fabric for the pot handlers. It’s been a pretty soothing process to watch, even though Sylvain had politely declined accompanying her to the weaver district so she could select the cloth. But the results of that effort—doubtlessly agonizing, given how the jaunt had taken the entire day—are going to pay off. Piles of neat little squares form a mountain range’s worth of fabric around their parlor. Mercedes has cut each bolt with precision and care, like she’s personally going to serve each poor villager a ladleful of broth with that pot handler herself. The knife moves through thread like an extension of her fingers.

Press, slide, cut, set aside. Press, slide, cut, set aside. Press—

“I didn’t know you were so interested in such crafts, Sylvain. Care to join me?”

It’s that even, cheerful tone of voice that lets him know she’s teasing him for staring…but is also unimpressed with his unwillingness to help. Sylvain feels his cheeks color.

“You do such a great job. I’d only get in your way,” he winks despite his embarrassed flush.

“Oh, I’m quite good at teaching these things! Dimitri was useless before we sat down together, and look at him now!” She laughs and tosses another square. It lands perfectly on another stack of ten.

Sylvain wonders if Dimitri had thought of Mercedes while stitching his wounds in the years before they’d found him. The thought irks him for no logical reason. He’s _glad _Mercedes had essentially saved the crown prince’s wounds from getting infected. Dimitri could have been missing a lot more than an eye when the Archbishop had excavated him.

“But since he’s not here,” Mercedes continues, “I may have to recruit more experienced help.”

The comment irritates him for a second, but then Sylvain recognizes her tone as thoughtful, not chastising. “Too much work?”

“Too much work,” she admits. “I know, I know, yes, _I’m_ saying that.”

“Nah, I wasn’t gonna give you a hard time about that.” Okay, he definitely was. “I’m just surprised you wanted to make all these things for the soup kitchen in the first place.”

Mercedes snips off the last thread of the latest square and starts a new pile. “Because it needed doing.”

“Yes, but you, on your own? Without any helpers?”

Mercedes purses her lips. “I thought you weren’t going to give me a hard time.”

The air between them grows tense. There’s a hot, bitter squeeze in Sylvain’s chest and he doesn’t know why. He hastily reaches for something familiar—

“Only as hard as you like it, babe.”

—and the metallic taste of regret accompanies each word.

Mercedes doesn’t even blush. Her expression doesn’t change. Sylvain’s laugh feels frozen on his face, and he knows it’s not really the most tasteful of jokes, but why does this feel so _bad_?

“Hm,” she says, and sets to her task again.

It’s properly winter now. Their parlor is uncomfortable and cold, and Sylvain doesn’t feel like calling for a fire.

He spends the day in the alchemy laboratory again, practicing white healing magic.

* * *

The caravans of belated wedding presents have finally started trailing into town. They’re all official ones, not personal ones: trade agreements from distant landowners, produce shipments from minor lords who hadn’t been invited, cold hard coin from territories who knew they owed House Gautier a debt for liberation from Imperial rule.

The treasurer and his son take care of most of the affair. Sylvain, however, is not a trusting man by nature. He’s fond of strolling into their office unannounced with a bottle of quality brandy, three glasses, and a loud cry of “Hey, how’s it shining up in here?”

They don’t appreciate his presence. The treasurer has been serving his family for thirty-three years, and the son has been _serving_ one of Sylvain’s first ex-girlfriends for ten of those years. Neither of them come right out and say it, but Sylvain knows they feel disrespected. The Margrave Gautier is bound to hear some carefully-worded complaints soon.

But hey. Honesty is an important thing to monitor in one’s day-to-day rule. After all, if he can’t trust his subjects, how can he claim to trust himself?

Well. Sylvain’s recent behavior probably explains why he’s not even _trying _to claim that.

There's a strange undercurrent to the feel of their—his and Mercedes's—quarters recently. Like the air is tight, somehow. Sylvain would panic and blame their relationship if it felt normal when he was alone, but it doesn't. There's something...off.

He'll be in his dressing room on the mornings—afternoons—he wakes up late and alone, and, without any explanation, feel the need to put on layers and layers and layers of clothes even though it's rather balmy for a winter day. And later, when Mercedes returns home, he'll take them off with a speed that surprises himself, because there's no seduction in the movement.

When they're in any of their rooms together, be it the sitting room, the bedroom, the washroom getting ready for the day, there's a tension. Something foreign. Their idle chatter will dance around some topic neither of them know how to address. At first, Sylvain thought the topic was sex, and how much of it they're _not _having.

But the weird mood can strike in any context. The sewing incident was only the most recent example, not the most extreme.

Sylvain would stop running to monitor his wedding presents and their lack of impact on his personal life as an excuse to be _away _if he knew what he was running _away _from in the first place. He doesn't know how to address it. He doesn't know if Mercedes knows it's there. He doesn't know—

He doesn't _know_.

* * *

Sylvain raps on the door.

"Enter."

He does, closing the door to his mother's sitting room with a softness she'd always insisted upon. Mother's prim as a portrait at the tea table already waving away a servant. Steam from her cup shoos itself away from her fingertips.

This is the second-best tea set, Sylvain notes as Mother gives him leave to sit next to her. The rims of each teacup are circled in gold, and vines twirl around the base, creeping upwards. Up close, Sylvain can see his teacup has the tiniest chip near the handle. He's not sure if he should mention it to her or not.

"It's ginger," Mother tells him.

"Ah."

Sylvain offers her a sweetroll, which she declines. He puts it on his own plate. "No Mercedes today?"

He'll admit to some relief. Mother may like his wife, but _Sylvain _doesn't like being under her rather...specific scrutiny when his wife is _present_.

Mother sighs. "No, she's been making herself scarce as of late."

"Oh?" He sips more out of politeness than any real interest. It's too hot. He interrupts whatever Mother was saying by coughing and slamming the teacup down with too much force.

It's not _enough _force. It's enough to make Mother jump and warn him—belatedly—to be careful, it's hot. And it's enough to make that small chip grow into a crack. But it's not enough force to shatter the whole thing into a million pieces, so perhaps the Goddess does smile on him occasionally. It's the second-best set, and Sylvain's really not in a mood to deal with replacing it today.

"I think the castle town projects are coming along nicely, don't you?"

"Yep." Mother waits, raising her brows in an expression too reminiscent of Ingrid's for Sylvain's comfort. He clears his throat. "Considering how far away we are from reliable intel, it's pretty nice that the war relief efforts—"

"That's not what I meant and you know it," she tuts. Sylvain blinks. He does not, in fact, know it. "I'm speaking of what's going on _inside _town."

"So am I, Mother. The new buildings—"

"Don't be obstinate." He's not _trying _to be. "You do know about the plans for the school, I hope?"

"Um."

Mother sighs again and breaks off a piece of his pastry. She nibbles on it and stays quiet, an air of "I'll give you some time to think" swirling about her.

All Sylvain can think about, though, is how he wants to tease her about taking his food when he'd _literally _just offered it to her. But something tells him she wouldn't appreciate another sign of the slovenly mannerisms he'd developed while at war, that lack of respect, of deference, for one's superiors.

He doesn't miss war. By the Goddess, every day he wakes up in a bed, and a bed _without _blue sheets, he feels ready to kiss every soldier in the Kingdom.

But he does miss being able to call Ingrid "Ingrid" in public, or trip Ashe while they walk without it seeming like a horrible abuse of nobility, or hear "Sylvain, you insatiable jerk" from a commoner.

Okay, well, that last part isn't so bad to miss. But he can't understand a word from Shamir's spies about rooting out the last of the Dukedom's corruptions without puzzling through the various "begging your pardon"s and "surely it came to milord's attention"s.

"It's a school for the nobility," Mother finally concedes. Sylvain blinks and tries another sip of his tea while he processes.

Hadn't someone once told him ginger is an aphrodisiac? Sylvain's lip curls and he sets the cup down again—with less force, this time.

_Mother_.

"We've got plenty of those," he says.

"A _proper _one. Not for the regular material, that is. This has court behavior and its history alongside the usual politics, and religious obligations and their ceremonies and the suchlike. Duties for running a house, in some cases."

The whole thing sounds preposterous. A waste of taxes.

"These are things the nobility's already learning within their own homes and territories," Sylvain says carefully. "Some of the schools already teach those religious components, too, if I'm remembering right."

"Well, not everyone learns it with the same reliable diligence, and that inconsistency can be problematic." Mother hasn't touched her tea, but she tears off more of his sweetroll. Sylvain stares at the crack in his teacup while she talks. "People's priorities are skewed these days. The war...it ravaged so much more than land. Than bodies." Mother's hand trembles on her sweetroll, and Sylvain stares at it. Mother's never been frail. She takes a deep breath, and her hand is steady again, back to its smooth sureness. "To my mind—my sight, really, well...People look to the nobility for guidance in times like these. If we seem disorganized and at odds with each other, it can invite unrest. It looks like a vulnerability."

A single drop of ginger tea squeezes through the crack in Sylvain's teacup.

"I don't think enough people realize just how important Crests are to the stability of our country.'

"_What_?"

Sylvain's whipped his head up so fast there's an uncomfortable warmth in part of his neck. Mother looks taken aback, too.

"Surely you've heard people dismissing them too, Sylvain. With the company you keep..." She makes a face she reserves solely for his friendly acquaintances from the tavern.

Well, Sylvain _has _heard people dismissing them. He's been delighted.

"So that's one of the many reasons why establishing a school for the nobility such as this one is paramount to our continued success as a nation. Not even a territory. And I'd been hoping, what with the success she's had in the commoners' districts, the orphanages and whatnot...I'd been hoping Mercedes would be more keen on joining me in the supervision of these projects." Mother sighs, and Sylvain represses his own. But hers is one of severe disappointment, and his is one of sheer relief. "You know I adore her. I do. But for all her sweetness, she certainly can be stubborn."

Sylvain can't tear his eyes away from his chipped teacup while his mother complains—subtly—about Mercedes's resistance to focusing her attention on the noble districts, the matchmaking businesses, the tutelage of the up-and-coming...

When Mother grows tired and Sylvain is dismissed, he realizes the crack in his teacup is shaped exactly like Miklan's scar.

He's about to say this, his mouth open to call for the servant clearing the table.

It's the second-best tea set.

Sylvain doesn't want to be the one to replace it.

"Good evening, Mother."

He traps the words behind him when he closes her sitting room door. His heart is hammering when he returns to his own quarters. It's still hammering when he sees Mercedes humming by the desk embroidering pretty green leaves on baby smocks. It's still hammering when he cups her face and kisses her with enough force to make her gasp, but softly enough that he doesn't jostle her work.

"Oh," she greets him with wide eyes when he releases her. Sylvain chuckles over the thudding of his heartbeat and nods at the baby smocks.

"You're single-handedly clothing those kids, huh?"

Mercedes nods, trying to read his face without even an attempt at pretending otherwise. "I thought there would be fewer orphans after the war. But we always seem to have new babies on our doorstep."

Sylvain swallows the lump in his throat and nods, too. He kisses her forehead like he's swearing an oath.

He wants to say something important. Something to let her know he _knows_.

But he doesn't. He just kisses her forehead, and she closes her eyes when he does it, and the air in their quarters lifts its weight.

* * *

"Do you remember the first time you said you loved me?"

There is no hesitation when Sylvain replies, "Yes."

Mercedes tucks her legs under her nightgown and blows on her tea with a smile. She's relaxing on the rug in front of the fire again. She's just gotten out of the bath, and Sylvain's just gotten out of the...doorframe by her bath, and the cozy affection Sylvain is feeling for her right now just by looking at her like this is the only thing keeping him from getting in the bath himself.

The air is muggy with sweat and steam and a little bit of sex. It's normal again. Things are back as they should be.

"I'd never seen you cry until then," he tells her. "I know it wasn't exactly the most romantic moment, and I usually can't stand to see women crying—" But he's confused when Mercedes shakes her head.

"That wasn't the first time."

The look on his face must be truly ridiculous, because Mercedes bursts into tinkling laughter.

"Oh, goodness! You really don't remember! We were still in school then."

Fear and shock have finally done Sylvain's erection in. He may as well hold off on the bath. The laugh hasn't quite left Mercedes's lips when he sinks to the floor next to her. "I had...pried too much. We didn't know each other very well then."

She's quiet. Sylvain sees her fingers tapping thoughtfully on her teacup and suddenly, very badly wants to know what they'll taste like. Like tea, or soap, or maybe not soapy _enough—_

"I hadn't known then how different your life had been from mine. Because of your Crest, I mean."

Sylvain drags his gaze from her fingers to her face. She looks embarrassed by what she's saying, and he silently praises the Goddess for not letting him act on his inappropriately-timed finger-tasting impulse. "Everyone gets affected differently," he tries to reassure her, but Mercedes shakes her head.

"I don't think I responded very well. I made a joke, I think. About you saving me from this life."

And _now _he remembers. And he laughs.

"Joke's on _you_, huh? Because you didn't believe me when I said I loved you from the bottom of my heart and wanted to marry you, yeah?" Sylvain bumps their wedding rings together, and they knock against each other with a merry _dink_.

Mercedes's smile is still embarrassed, but at least she looks less guilty. "I want you to know I was scared then. And I'm sorry."

"Huh?"

Mercedes reaches to put her teacup on the end table and scoots closer to him. "I felt just terrible for pushing you to tell me what you had been through, and why you...ah, why you were _with _all those girls. I didn't want you to think I had tricked something vulnerable out of you to bring us closer. I wanted to be your friend, but...I didn't want you to think I was trying to seduce you."

Sylvain laughs so hard he winds up lying down with his back on the floor. "Sweetheart, I honestly don't think anyone could accuse you of trying to seduce an honorable man in a moment of weakness. And it _definitely _wasn't that moment. Or man, really."

"Oh, stop that," Mercedes snaps, but he can hear the smile she's trying to repress. She does bat his arm, though.

"And you tried to seem..._non-seductive _by...by begging me to marry you?"

"I didn't—it wasn't marriage! I, well, I thought if I were disingenuous, then my true intentions would be clear and safe for you—"

Sylvain cackles and waves his hand in the air, letting the firelight catch the jewels in his ring. "Wow, backfired _hard_, huh?" He dodges when she tries to grab his mocking hand, and seeing all those gems in matching Gautier rings glitter makes his teasing laughter turn warm and affectionate.

He lets her catch him when she next makes a grab for his hand, lets himself melt beneath her when she swings herself over his body and pin the offending limb to the rug.

"Hmph," Mercedes scoffs, "you needn't be so smug."

Now she sounds teasing, but Sylvain feels guilt shoot through his stomach. He opens his mouth to apologize, to insist he's not smug, he's _happy_, but finds his lips otherwise occupied before he has the chance.

Mercedes breaks the kiss before he's fully processed he was even being kissed. Sylvain's left gasping while she observes him from beneath lowered lashes. "Sorry," she says. Sylvain shakes his head over and over, trying to convey as many signals of _no worries _as possible. She trails her fingertips from his jaw to his chin, down his neck, and pausing at the dip in his collar. "I didn't mean that. I'm happy you love me." She laughs again, a little self-deprecating. "I do wish that hadn't been the first time you said it to me, though!"

Sylvain strokes the top of her thigh with his unpinned hand. His mind has just now processed the fact she's straddling him, and his body is starting to become interested in this fact. But when he says, "I'm glad you remember it anyway," it's his stupid heart that's caught up to the conversation.

Mercedes watches his thumb on her thigh as it traces slow circles. She releases his other wrist, and he wastes no time in gripping her hips properly. But she places a finger on his lips.

Sylvain quirks a brow but remains quiet. They both know nothing was going to _happen_.

"You should take your bath." He's about to complain when her finger presses a little harder. "Can you, ah...can you try not to, hm, you know?"

He grins against her finger. "Jack off?"

Her finger smooshes hard against his skin in punishment, twisting his lips a little, and it's a real struggle not to laugh at her blushing glare.

"Yes, well, that."

"Better be a _real _good reason."

Sylvain's rather proud of how utterly red that smooth drawl gets her. She's crimson straight down her neck.

"I wanted to touch you tonight."

Sylvain doesn't remember having lungs.

Or a heart.

Or a voice.

He does remember having a cock, and does remember having a _painfully hard one_, but that should be a given.

But he doesn't remember Mercedes ever having said something like that so evenly before.

She is admittedly not looking him in the eyes and bites her lip when she adds, "If that's acceptable to you."

Sylvain hopes it makes up for some of the worse heartbreaks he's caused when he croaks, "I don't want you to do something because you think I want it."

They haven't moved from this position, with Mercedes sitting on top of him and her hips in his hands. Sylvain can't figure out how to extract himself.

Mercedes, if possible, flushes darker. "I...I really..." Sylvain holds his breath, but she changes gears. "You...when I bathe, and you talk to me...I have fun. With you." She strokes part of her hair, a repeated brushing, a nervous gesture from when she had that long plait in the Officers Academy. "I want to do that with you, but you told me..."

He had. Sylvain doesn't do that. It had been an awkward conversation, he'd felt, and he'd worked up the nerve for a week to tell her in one rushed sentence about narration during sex, but she'd nodded, sipped tea, and the subject had never been broached again.

"I want to make you feel good like that."

"I mean, but, uh, you don't have to jump straight to touching, if that's, you know, too much." Sylvain manages to let go of her now. The next step is sitting up—

"I like, ah, feeling you. Like this."

Mercedes _rocks_, and startles a moan so unlike him that Sylvain clamps his newly-freed hand over his mouth.

"I want to. Sylvain. Love. I want to make you—I want to be the reason you feel good tonight." Mercedes's tongue swipes across her bottom lip nervously, and Sylvain openly stares. "I want to be the one to bring you pleasure tonight. And, and even if that means you don't want me to touch, I can, I want to be there—"

"Mercedes," Sylvain interrupts, "I love you, and there are so many great options in this conversation, and I hate to cut you off. But I really, really need you to get off me if either of us wanna explore _any _of these options."

Mercedes's eyebrows pinch in hurt for a blessedly short moment before comprehension dawns. She scurries off him, falling the rest of the way as he runs for the bedroom.

He'll make his bath cooler than usual. He really doesn't want this to be over too fast.

* * *

The unfortunate side effect of the lukewarm bath—and a bath at all—is that he has plenty of time for anxiety to settle in. Sylvain opens the bedroom door with his robe tied tight around him like armor.

Mercedes is lighting a new fire. She never calls the servants for this sort of thing, and Sylvain's pretty grateful for it right now. It roars to life, and when she gets to her feet, her silhouette glows under her nightgown.

Sylvain's mouth goes dry. His hand rests on the sash of the robe like it's looking for a hilt. Mercedes smiles at him and comes close, arms outstretched. He tucks her head under his chin and squeezes her. "Mercedes," he murmurs, and hears her breathing quicken. "I think I need to touch you."

He strokes her back when he says it, and he feels a shiver pass down her spine with his words. "But I thought—"

"I was thinking," he says to the fire behind her head. "Since, you know, you took away my usual bathtime coping method to _avoid _thinking." She giggles into his chest. "I really, really, really want to touch you. Always. Just...fuck. Sorry. _Always_. And..."

Sylvain swallows, like that'll make his mouth less dry. He wrenches the words free. "I don't know if, uh, I can...come without knowing I...made you feel good, too." He quotes her, the things she said, because it's easier to steal words than to create excuses. Or label his emotions.

Sylvain's not even sure anymore what those emotions could be. He could be like Dimitri and call himself a monster. Could say his demons are shaped like village girls with plain faces and demands for his body to improve their lives.

He could be like Felix and say he was a man created for a purpose and one purpose only. Could say he needs something familiar, because fear is comforting if only because he knows what it feels like.

He could be like Ingrid and say something about needing to prove himself. Like Ashe and say something about doing the right thing. Like Dedue and say he owes it to her because he loves her in a way he didn't think possible. Like Annette and say he's trying so hard to be better but it's so _exhausting_ when he doesn't even know what "better" could look like.

But he's Sylvain. And Sylvain says, "Touching you's _really _gonna turn me on. I wanna be the reason you feel good tonight, too."

Mercedes pulls back to look at him. The instants where he can only see the top of her head, not her expression, manage to last long enough to make his hands start sweating. But she's smiling shyly and her cheeks are dusted pink. "You already were that reason."

Sylvain swoops in for a kiss. "Call me ambitious."

He doesn't even have time to worry past that impulsive kiss. With shaking fingers, Mercedes presses his hands to her heart—

No.

The front laces of her nightgown.

"'Ambitious,'" she obeys with a smile. And she brings him briefly into a terrifying world without words, simultaneously familiar and unknowable. Her lips are soft and _hot_, and she tastes like tea and _Mercedes_ and quick gasps in his mouth. His fingers twist and pull at thread like he's a marionette of a puppeteer, manipulating cords without any intent of his own.

This isn't going to start off slow, and if Mercedes is okay with that, so is Sylvain. But...

"Just touching," he remembers to sort-of ask. He's breathless even to his own ears, but honestly, Mercedes's nightgown is half unlaced already and he can see how her breasts fall differently, less restricted.

"Yes. Right. Let's just..." Mercedes gently pries his stiff fingers from her laces. "Bed?"

Sylvain doesn't really understand, but that's a good word, and it's a specific one. Specifics are good. Goals. Anchors. Mercedes leads him to the edge of the bed, and she kneels in front of him while he clambers up to join her.

Her lips ghost over the side of his neck, breath making chills rise on his skin when she says, "Nightclothes on."

Something deep within him sneers at the assumption he wouldn't be able to control himself if enough clothes came off. As if he hasn't seen enough _skin _in his—

Their wedding night.

Mercedes standing tall and surprised in the bath.

Too many layers for mild weather.

"That's hot," he whispers, and grazes the shell of her ear with his teeth. Her quick intake of breath encourages him to do it again, to take her earlobe between his teeth and gently flick his tongue against it. "I could be into that."

He makes his way down the side of her neck, alternating bites with hard sucks. Hands slide down fabric—Mercedes's nails raking down the back of his robe, Sylvain's palms gently cupping her breasts.

Sylvain swears under his breath when she pushes herself closer. Still uncertain, he squeezes, and hears her breathy laugh.

"You act like you've never felt breasts before."

"I've never felt _your _breasts before." Halfway through the sentence, Sylvain realizes he's being dead serious, not matching her teasing tone. He tentatively swipes a thumb—_right, she likes the thumbs—_over the center of one mound and is rewarded by a soft squeak. "Never felt _that _before, either."

He leans back, away from her, and Mercedes lets him. She releases her hold on his shoulders and looks at him looking at her, looks at his face while he smooths the soft fabric over her nipples once, twice, stops. Sylvain can feel himself getting hard, but he can also feel the way his serious expression isn't changing as he watches her watching him. Her half-parted lips are red, shiny, and full from kissing. And her dark eyes...

Mercedes swallows uncertainly. "Did you...you stopped. Ah, is this..."

"Lean back against me."

Mercedes follows his movements. Sylvain settles back near the headboard, and Mercedes turns her back to him, lets him scoop her up and nestle her in his arms. He licks a slow stripe on _that _spot on the nape of her neck, and her broken moan rings through the room.

"Here. You said you liked feeling me, huh?" He waits, and Mercedes shifts experimentally. Her rear brushes his cock under his sleep pants, robe to the side. Sylvain hisses and scrapes his teeth against her neck. "You can feel how fucking hard I get when I make you come on _my _fingers."

Mercedes gasps. Her hands grab onto his legs trapping her in his embrace. Sylvain switches to the other side of her neck and starts nibbling teasing kisses there, too. "Fun to know cursing's on the 'good' list, too," he mumbles against her skin.

"Mm."

"Mm?" Sylvain's fingers card through her hair, tilting her head so he can kiss, suck, lick more skin. His other hand begins caressing a path down her breastbone, down her stomach.

"Should I..." Mercedes parts her legs a little, and her knees knock against his thighs. Sylvain grins against her neck.

"Eager?"

"Of course I am."

He laughs, and—he's _blushing_? Four Saints, he's really blushing at something as simple and earnest as—

Sylvain applauds his idea for this position, which prevents her from seeing _his _face, too.

"Mm, I want some more convincing proof." He can practically hear the question bubbling to her lips as he lifts the hem of her nightgown.

She's tucked against his chest. Surely she can feel how fast his heart is racing.

"How can—oh!" The tip of Sylvain's middle finger strokes something _wet_, and his laugh shakes the two of them.

He's shaking, too. And it's not even her _clit_.

"Okay?" he asks, stroking up her center with deliberate slowness. He stops just below where he _knows _she wants.

Sylvain can preen all he wants he's "just checking she's still into it." When her hips jerk in anticipation, however, and twist again trying to force his hand up, he knows full well they're leagues away from "enthusiastic consent" and into the territory of "_I want to hear you say it_."

"Please."

"Good."

Yes. He sounds far too pleased with himself. And judging by the way Mercedes's broken whine sounds almost like a scoff, she hears it, too.

Mercedes is _wet_. With each careful stroke of his middle finger pressing just on the outside of her entrance, she only gets wetter. She's breathing heavy but even, her hands on his legs not trembling quite as much. Sylvain keeps up the simple rhythm, not pushing in or going high enough. She settles deeper against his chest and sighs, and Sylvain takes that as his cue to bring his other hand around her front, beneath her nightgown, and press a tight circle to her clit just as he strokes up with his finger.

Mercedes cries out, her nails sinking into the thin wool of his sleep pants. "Ah, more," she manages to insist when Sylvain cautiously removes his hands. "More."

"Okay, okay. Ha, I got you," he chuckles when she wriggles, like his fingers need convincing. "Like this?"

He makes the same movement. Two fingers on the hood of her clit, a fast, small rub.

"Yes. More of that."

Sylvain keeps it slow. Two fingers, two circles, two seconds of a break before he starts again. It's so agonizingly slow that Sylvain wonders how anyone could possibly come just from this—

_Mercedes peeks out from under the bubbles. Her smile sears him. “I start out gentle._”

Sylvain pushes his middle finger against her entrance. "What do you want?"

"Don't tease me."

"No, I'm seriously not. Do you want faster—" he rubs harder and just a little faster and keeps it up while he talks through her startled moan, "or do you want me inside?"

"Yes."

"Yes to faster, or yes to—"

Mercedes moans again, but instead of elaborating, spreads her legs more and cants her hips up. Sylvain's finger slips inside her without any help.

"Oh, fuck, you're so wet. Goddess help me, you're—"

"And yes to faster," Mercedes whispers. She closes her eyes, shudders, and grinds herself against his stationary hand.

Sylvain takes the hint—well, the direct request—and speeds up. Mercedes is moaning helplessly against him, moaning his _name _more often than not, trying to bury her face in his neck while also seeking the best angle for her own pleasure.

"Perfect, you're so perfect," Sylvain finds himself repeating. It's so simple, all too simple to curl his one finger and hear her keen. To change the pressure on her clit when she least expects it and have her plead softly, so softly, quiet and serious like a prayer. To press kisses she can't possibly feel against her hair, the tip of her ear, and hear her whisper his name in the same tone as when she says she loves him.

"More?"

"Please."

Two fingers, _not _gentle for Mercedes von Martritz. She's trying to calm down now, Sylvain can feel it. One instant she'll be riding his hand like she'll die if she stops, and the next she rocks against him with long, slow movements, letting him stroke her at his own pace.

"Good?"

"Good. Please, I'm—"

_Ah_.

"Do you want to come?"

His voice rumbles against her ear, deep enough Sylvain can feel the vibrations of his own words himself.

"I want—" Mercedes cuts herself off with a squeak, and it's just too funny, too cute for Sylvain not to laugh something that's not quite dark but not quite pure, either. And he wants to hear it again. He curls his fingers and strokes slow, up, teasing another slow circle with his other hand, and is rewarded.

He wants to hear it again.

And again.

And again.

"Sylvain!"

Mercedes screams his name, she clamps down _hard _around his fingers, screams his name again. Her nails dig deep into his pants. Each roll of her hips, chasing after his fingers, end with a roll against his cock. Sylvain groans senseless things against her temple, riding it out with her slow and steady, willing his own hips immobile as best he can.

"I need..."

"Yeah." Sylvain withdraws his fingers carefully, and Mercedes _hums_. He wipes his hands off on the sheets without thinking and hopes she won't call him out on it, hopes he won't have to explain it's an impersonal habit, but Mercedes is too busy snuggling into his chest to notice.

Sylvain isn't sure he can stand to be looked at right now.

Did that just _happen_?

Mercedes cried his name when she came. She always does, yes, but it's different here. It's different when it was _his_ fingers _making _her come, when it had been _his_ idea to—

Mercedes twists around in his arms, gets to her knees, plants her hands on his shoulders, and smiles down at him with a giddy glint in her eyes that could make any man, woman, god, or monster believe fear is a weakness for _others_.

"I hope you appreciate _my_ ambitious ideas, too."

Mercedes's tongue in his mouth silences any stupid, flirty, deflective comment Sylvain could dare to make.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I return from conferences and holidays!!! What a time to break up a chapter...sorry. Thank you for bearing with it, and me, and leaving those moving, lovely, loving comments, and definitely being no one I know IRL, because it truly would be horrible to have that last tag be prophetic, right? ..._Right???_

* * *

Mercedes is a woman with a mission, and that mission right now is apparently to make Sylvain come in his pants untouched.

She's not interested in his hands or fingers anymore. No, Sylvain had met his own mission well. Properly overachieved, as promised. Mercedes hums against his lips when he runs his hands up and down her sides, but she doesn't appear invested in pursuing much more than that. So each time she pulls his hair back to bare his neck, or trail her fingers up the smooth skin and rough scars on his half-exposed chest, Sylvain is very aware he's benefiting from the touches far more than her.

"Do you want this on?"

_Off off off off off off_

Mercedes nips _that _spot on his collarbone, and all thoughts fly from his head.

"Uh, what?" he gasps.

"Do you want—" she plucks at his robe, "—to leave your robe on? Or..."

That chant begging her to strip him roars in his head again, but Mercedes has leaned away from him to point at his robe, leaving enough space between them for fear to worm its way in. Compromise. A compromise is in order.

"Maybe just untie it," Sylvain suggests. "I liked having you still dressed and screaming in my arms, but we can play it by ear." He grabs her and tongues a sensitive spot between her ear and jaw for emphasis. Mercedes moans a laugh and shoves him back on the pillows.

The force startles him, and her, too, judging by the way she claps her hand over her mouth. Sylvain's got no patience for apologies, however. The soft, sensual affection in her eyes when she'd pushed him had touched something small and scared inside him, and he's not interested in stopping to analyze that "something" with her.

"Come here." He loosens the sash with one hand and beckons her with two fingers. The two fingers that had, until recently, been stroking and pumping inside her. Just for effect. Mercedes fixes him with that calculating stare that always sets his blood ablaze, says nothing, and yanks the sash completely free of its fabric loops.

"No. I'll stay right here."

Sylvain's breath comes out as a hiss. Those are familiar words. And the expression on Mercedes's face? It's familiar, too. It looks like how his face feels when he tells her those same words when she bathes.

Mercedes's gaze drops to his still-clothed legs. The direction of her stare hones in on a very specific place there. As if Sylvain needed to be reminded even _more _of where he wants her.

"Did you change your mind?" he asks without meaning to. Deep down, he's furious with himself for questioning a good thing, but at this point in his life, Sylvain isn't sure he could have shut himself up.

Mercedes doesn't give him more time to panic. Instead, she bites her lower lip, fixes him with a steady, imperious look, and palms the—

"_Oh fuck!_"

Mercedes tries to snatch her hand away, but Sylvain is faster and keeps her there.

It's not even anything special, just a hand on his crotch, not even moving. But his heartbeat is going wild. He's going to come in two seconds with anticipation alone.

"Good?"

Sylvain can't even begin to explain how he has a very complicated answer to that single simple question.

"I need to just..." He lets go of her hand and unbuttons the top of his pants. If he doesn't get some freedom, he will die before he's even gotten to finish.

"Can I...help?" Mercedes gestures to the third button, because now he's practically torn off the second, but Sylvain shakes his head and laughs.

"Goddess, _no_. I'll be ruined just seeing your fingers on..." Sylvain swallows, imagining the curious, innocent, _aroused _expression on Mercedes's face the first time she tries to learn the way a man's—_his, Sylvain's_—trousers open up.

He needs to calm down. He doesn't complete the sentence, but Mercedes gets the point and just...watches. Which isn't as helpful as he'd wish.

"I'll have other opportunities to learn, I suppose," she offers a nervous giggle, and Sylvain takes a long, slow, deep breath, uncaring of how obvious his frayed restraint is.

He's snapped open all the buttons. His erection is grateful for the looser fit, but Sylvain hesitates. Mercedes's breaths are coming shallow, and he can see the way her fingertips tremble while she stares at the open fabric.

"Uh," Sylvain says with as much eloquence as he can muster.

"Your skin..." Mercedes murmurs. He tenses, prepared for a compliment on his body he's not sure he can handle right now. Mercedes notices and smooths back her utterly wrecked hair. "It's just...the firelight. There are...shadows."

Sylvain doesn't quite understand, but conversation is making this easier. He won't last long anyway, but he wants to last a _little_. "Shadows?"

"You, ah...Your skin's not as...You have. Hair." Mercedes gestures helplessly in the direction of his crotch, and Sylvain feels a toothy smirk growing on his lips. He sits up and lets his thumb hook inside the parted cloth.

"So do you," he reminds her. "Or did you forget?" His other hand makes a pass at her hem, and Mercedes's scoff sounds an awful lot like the start of a breathy moan. She bats him away, but surprises him by turning that same dismissive wave into a brush against _skin_. The same skin she'd pointed out, coarse hair trailing down, her fingertips stopping just above where his own thumb in his pants has halted.

"Hush. Let me—"

Her fingertips stroke lightly _down_. Past his thumb.

Sylvain watches her face, like that'll calm him down. Like watching her feel him for the first time isn't inherently arousing itself. Like watching her eyes widen when she feels him _twitch _just from above, like seeing her mouth open just a little when he helps tugs his pants down more, like watching at just the right moment when she finally—

"_Merced—_fuck!"

Sylvain's cock is free of his pants, and Mercedes has got her fingers wrapped around its base. She licks her lips once and strokes upwards, _once_, and Sylvain's hips strain to follow her.

Oh, he is just _pathetic_.

Mercedes lets go, abruptly, before he can convey his dire circumstances. It's so abrupt, in fact, that the cold air replacing her warm hand preserves his dignity. "I don't know what to do," she laughs, crossing her arms over her face. "I can't tell if I'm hurting you or not."

Sylvain forces himself to laugh, too. There are many times he wishes his dick had a brain of its own, but right now he wishes it could think of some unpleasant distractions to calm itself down so his own brain can focus on maintaining a conversation.

"Is this what I sound like when I'm in pain, too? Is _that _what you're into—"

Mercedes kisses the tip of his nose, which shuts him up nicely. "You have such a filthy mouth, don't you?"

"Is that why you're kissing my nose instead?"

The verbal ripostes are helping.

"A smart mouth, too." She leans in to kiss it, and Sylvain almost lets her before he turns his head at the last second. Her lips make the tiniest _smack_ on his cheekbone.

"Mercedes, I don't think I can look at you _and _touch you at the same time."

Mercedes groans against his ear, and while it's a half-frustrated sound, he still shivers.

"I just," he clarifies, _"really _want to enjoy this, but every time I feel you and you ask something and then I try to talk...I don't want to explode in like, two seconds."

Mercedes laughs _hard_. Her eyes are sparkling when she looks at—Sylvain chuckles and looks away, at her neck, because he _can't_. "I'm flattered, I think." He hears her sigh. "But I don't know...what to ask, or how, and even if I did...I want to be able to see you, too. Not like before, with...when it was...well."

"When I was making you come?" Sylvain can't resist lapping at a bruised red mark on her neck, and she squeals and pushes him away.

"I want to see you, too," she repeats, like he hadn't just sucked on her neck. They pull back, and to Mercedes's credit, she holds Sylvain's gaze, her hand safely away from his unbuttoned pants, his neglected cock standing tall and proud between them.

Sylvain doesn't have the courage to look at her long, though. "Uh," he says again, eyes darting to the side. Her head turns instinctively to follow their aimless direction, and they see their reflections in the floor-length standing mirror at the same time.

* * *

In the end, they're in a similar position as before, but on the edge of the bed. Mercedes is curled around him, her hand trailing lazily down his bare chest, stroking lightly past the scars, down to the rougher hair below his stomach. Sylvain knows she's watching herself—her hand—in the mirror, because he feels her fingers slow their movements as they approach, as the back of her hand threatens to brush the slick tip of his cock. He's kept his eyes open but away from the mirror, as if he doesn't know what's going to happen. He grips the bedsheets and breathes in, and when Mercedes's fingers wrap once more around his shaft, he shudders on his exhale.

"Tighter when you stroke up. Close to the head," he rasps. Mercedes, bless her, doesn't say anything. She just obeys. Slow, smooth stroke up, her hand progressively squeezing tighter. He hums some sort of assent when she pauses, her question silent but clear. She maintains the pressure, neither decreasing nor increasing, and at the head—

"Perfect, _Goddess_, that's just...yeah."

"Down?"

Her voice is a whisper, and she squeezes again just a little to punctuate her question. Sylvain gasps. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, down, uh, normally. And uh, yeah, like that, _again_."

A _mirror_. Why had that never occurred to him? Ever, in his life?

Sylvain's not the one using it, sure, but even knowing Mercedes is watching herself stroke him, using it to gauge his reactions and follow his orders, directions, guidance...

He can just imagine her.

White nightgown askew, one of her sleeves trailing on his thigh. Sylvain can feel that, can feel the cloth brush against his exposed hipbone when she strokes up. Her tongue darting out to wet her lips each time she changes direction. One knee bent and tucked just behind his back, supporting him. The other he can feel pressed against his thigh. Her breasts, tight stiff nipples under her nightgown, pushing against his shoulder. Her serious, serious expression, _what does she look like when she—_

Her thumb dips into his slit for an instant, and his hips jerk _hard_. "Fuck. Yeah, yes, that." Sylvain doesn't recognize this hoarse-voiced version of himself.

It's honestly such a relief not to know who he is right now.

"Faster?"

Sylvain doesn't use words, but he does squeeze his eyes shut and put his hand over hers to show her how. How to keep that pressure constant but increase the pace. It's distracting enough, requires enough thought that he doesn't spill himself right away, but it feels too good for him_ not _to be greedy. "Under my—Mercedes, give me your hand."

Oh, thank the Goddess. His mind had been too addled to be clear, but Mercedes seems to have understood Sylvain had meant her _other_ hand. Still helping her through the rhythm, he takes her free hand and cups it under his balls, swearing and shivering when her small, soft fingers touch the sensitive skin.

"Like this?" Sylvain nods what feels like a million times and hums something he hopes sounds like 'yes.' Mercedes presses a kiss just under his earlobe and laughs. "Glad you're having fun."

Well, there's really no adequate response to that.

Sylvain releases her hands with a sigh or a groan or something like that and lets her take over. Her speed is just _perfect_. She squeezes and releases pressure like handling his cock is what her palm, fingers, hands were made to do. What else of her body was made to take it? How well, how hard, how _perfectly_ could she take this rhythm he's shown her, because Mercedes is doing such a flawless job of following his instructions with her hands alone, aided only by a mirror, that Sylvain wonders, with heat coiling in his gut, with the sudden urge to _move_...

And when she breaks it, it's not too much or because she's faltering. No, it's because Mercedes _is _a temptress when she wants to be and slows down, down, down to teasing, tight strokes that make him try to get his hips to chase the sensation she stripped him of. Sylvain thrusts into her hand, hoping she'll get the idea again, but when she stays slow and steady, he remembers, again, she has the fucking _mirror _and surely knows—

"Do you want to come already?"

Her voice is quiet, commanding. Liquid heat electrifies Sylvain's spine when she speaks.

"Now who's teasing?" he manages to choke out. Mercedes hums. Her thumb, now slick with precum, slides a torturous line up the side of his shaft. She presses her other hand down on his thighs, keeping him from impatiently jerking his hips again. Sylvain's frustrated groan sounds like a petulant whine. If his eyes were open, he'd be glaring. "Mercedes."

"Sylvain." She's imitating his inflection, going slow, her thumb smoothing the vein on his underside. "Look at me when you come. Promise?"

He'll promise _anything _if she'll just get her hands moving again.

"Whatever," he gasps. His eyelids are starting to flutter open, hips straining again, when Mercedes _sinks _her teeth into his neck. They're fully open in a flash. "Fuck!"

"Look at me," Mercedes says, and he's about to argue that he _is_ when she speeds up again. Sylvain doesn't exist as anything, no body, no Crest, no soul. Just quick, heavy breaths and a painfully hot cock and eyes raking greedily over Mercedes's barely-clothed form. Her lips chase one of his moans, swallow his gasps, tongue slipping into his mouth to flick against the roof of his mouth. Sylvain is reeling when she pulls back but keeps up the pace. "I'm the one making you come," she tells his reflection in the mirror. "Look at me."

Oh, Goddess.

He is.

Sylvain can only see Mercedes's profile, the soft curve of her jawbone, the flush in just one of her cheeks. She's staring at her hand, but not her real hand—her hand in the mirror, wrapped around him, up and down, two light fingers curling against his balls. Grinning when he moans like a sob. Sylvain is watching her like she told him to, but Mercedes is just watching _herself_ make _his _reflection fall apart. He paws around for something, some part of her to hold onto. His nails find a soft part of her thigh that's probably not firm and muscled enough for her comfort and scrapes deep into it.

Mercedes yelps, and her rhythm falters before she remembers to steady herself. Sylvain clutches her, struggling to warn her—

"Please, it's okay," Mercedes whispers. She licks her lips and repeats to his reflection, "It's okay."

He doesn't have time to warn—

"Mercedes, you—!"

Sylvain comes _hard_. Mercedes mewls in surprise when she feels the first hot splashes on her fingers, but Sylvain at least has the presence of mind to take over when she startles and releases him. He falls back and strokes himself through the rest, cupping his hand over the tip to catch what he can. Mercedes recovers, too, while he tries to quiet down and sound less like an army campaign prostitute. She plants hot little kisses on the side of his neck, his shoulders, his biceps, traces circles on his chest while his ribs rise and fall too fast.

She avoids his stomach, where most of the thick strands of semen had landed, and when Sylvain gets his breath back, that's the first thing he laughs at. "Forgot to tell you," he mumbles through his dopey grin. Mercedes titters. She's not looking in the mirror anymore, but she's not really meeting his eyes, either.

"I'll remember next time."

_Next time_.

With the way she's staring at his chest through lowered lashes and pretty blushing cheeks, if Sylvain were even a few years younger, "next time" would be happening very, very soon.

"Do you want me to, uh..." Mercedes gestures vaguely to the mess on his stomach, and Sylvain sighs.

Well, that's what he got for putting his favorite robe back _on_ after his bath. He wipes himself off with the corners, stands up, and shrugs the thing off. "My own fault," he shakes his head, wadding it up in a ball and tossing it in the vague direction of his dressing room. He falls flat on his back on the bed, too winded to do more than tuck himself back in his unbuttoned trousers.

_Goddess take him_, that felt good. Sylvain gropes blindly for Mercedes's hand and presses a sloppy kiss to the back. He closes his eyes when he feels her fingers scraping through his hair.

"Love you."

"That's a little undignified," she replies. Sylvain cracks his eyes open, vaguely stung, when he sees the quirk of her lips and the direction of her stare at his discarded, _well-used_ robe. "Whatever will the chambermaids think?"

Plenty of witty replies are on the tip of Sylvain's tongue, but Mercedes is reclined at the perfect angle for him to wrap his arms around her waist and bury his face against her belly. So he does both and keeps his witty replies to himself. "Can't bring myself to care much, sweetheart."

He feels her stomach shake as she tries not to laugh and fails. "_This_ is what all those girls fought over? You're utterly helpless!"

Sylvain doesn't rise to the bait and instead nips her skin through her nightgown to cut her off. "Yep. Helpless. Completely at your mercy. _Whatever _will you do with me—"

"Nothing, apparently—"

"But what can _I _do with _you—"_

Gentle fingers again, through his hair, brushing over the shell of his ear, down the nape of his neck. "I love you."

Sylvain smiles against her body, big and sleepy enough he bets she can feel it. "So much." His voice is thick and muffled, but he knows she hears him anyway.

In the morning, the mirror's tactfully facing away from the bed. Mercedes has woken up before him, and Sylvain's torn between laughing or blushing when he hears the telltale splash of bathwater in the washroom. He settles for laughing, drags himself out of bed, and follows the source of the sound.

* * *

The messenger has to brave the northernmost storms of the north to arrive at Castle Gautier, so not only does this mean Sylvain and the rest of the family are the last to know thanks to geography, but because the woman naturally must take a half-day to be warmed with bed, bath, and bread.

Margrave Gautier is impatient, to say the least, but Mother manages to keep him from sending entire battalions of footmen to drag the shivering messenger from the barracks. "The poor thing's come straight from the capital," Mother chides him in that way only she's allowed. "If it were truly dire news, you know full well she'd have delivered it as her last words before keeling over on our doorstep. We don't want to hear people say the Gautiers make poor hosts, do we?"

Sylvain empathizes with his father, for once, and it takes his wife, too, keeping him occupied for the handful of hours they give the messenger. It could be a lot worse. The two of them have been finding several excellent methods of...occupying themselves as of late, and Mercedes only has to repeat the words "Annie sent me a _fascinating _and _informative _letter" once, adding only the clarification of "she and Felix just returned from their honeymoon, you know," to convince him to spend the afternoon in their bedroom.

By the time they emerge for supper with the rest of the family, Sylvain's much calmer and more prepared for the stupid dramatic anticipation and confident it won't amount to much. He takes his place at the table to his father's right, Mercedes takes her place next to him, and the messenger stands in front of them all, clears her throat, and unravels a small scroll.

"Their Royal Majesties, King Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd and Queen Ingrid Brandl Galatea, invite House Gautier to the Royal Palace of Fhirdiad beginning the month of the Garland Moon, for a grand ball celebrating the anniversary of his Majesty the King's liberation of Fódlan from tyrannical Adrestian Empire occupation. We owe our gratitude and salvation to the Progenitor Goddess, Sothis, and are blessed by the loving hand of our most esteemed Archbishop of the Church of Seiros."

The messenger goes on with more details, things that a scribe to the side is faithfully noting while the ruling Gautiers turn to their meals. Irritation jabs in Sylvain's stomach. He knows Dimitri would be mortified if he knew what upheaval he'd caused in Sylvain's family's schedules, and that neither he nor Ingrid wrote the note and thus wouldn't know how much pomp and circumstance it contained. But the Garland Moon is a couple moons away, and it would have been nice to have heard about the plans for such a huge event when he last saw them.

Like at court in Fhirdiad, say. Or even Felix and Annette's—

Mercedes nudges him under the table, and Sylvain sets down his cutlery to quirk a brow at her. "Why so sneaky?"

Mercedes tucks a longer strand of hair behind her ear, subtly covering her mouth with the movement. "I told you Annie sent me a letter."

Sylvain grins and rests one hand on her leg under the table a little higher than decorum can excuse. "A _great _letter."

She turns bright pink and clears her throat, tactfully inching away in her chair. Honestly, what else had she expected? "I didn't tell you all its contents."

_Now _she has his interest. "Oh?"

"Sylvain," she hisses, batting away his steadily-creeping-higher hand. Father has dismissed the messenger, and she and the scribe trail out of the dining room, continuing to trade notes and details. Mercedes pushes Sylvain's hand away. "I'd wanted to wait to tell you until after I'd heard the news. It seemed only fair, just in case."

"You're making me a little nervous, you know."

"It's nothing. It's just, well," Mercedes smiles, and she's _beautiful_. "Annie told me Ingrid is pregnant."

The words don't affect him the way Sylvain might have thought.

They don't affect him at all.

"Oh, that's great," he says, because it is, and Mercedes smiles. The meal goes on. Sylvain remains unaffected. The Margrave Gautier bids them good evening. The family departs. All is well.

"Where are you off to so late?"

Sylvain pauses by the door, adjusting his riding gloves. "Going to play cards with the gents at the tavern. Don't tell Mother."

Mercedes laughs harder than he thinks she means to. "I wouldn't dream of it. Have fun."

Unaffected, Sylvain waves off his groom and readies his horse himself. At a respectable pace, he trots out of the more respectable side of town and pulls up his cloak hood. Calmly, he enters his favorite inn and orders an entire bottle of their best, worst poison.

Sitting alone in the corner, Sylvain discovers the deeper into the bottle he drinks, the less he cares. And it's beautiful.

Mercedes is long asleep when he finally staggers home. Sylvain doesn't know how he managed to weave the horse back to the stables safely, or if he unsaddled the poor beast, or what his own name is.

There's no reason this news should have affected him. That's why it didn't. Not at all.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh god, monster of a chapter, longest one yet, I'm sorry in advance but I couldn't find a place I felt was good to break it up

Mercedes has been going to town with his mother of her own free will, and while this fact makes Mercedes uncomfortable to think about, it discomfits Sylvain more.

"It can be lonely shopping alone," Mercedes admits, "and if nothing else, it's so dangerous for me to head to the dressmaker without some sort of escort."

"Dangerous?" Sylvain thinks he agrees, but for different reasons. Mother waves merrily at the two of them from where she's directing servants to put which trunks and baskets where. He waves back. "Should we be sending more guards?"

"Oh, you," she laughs, patting his arm like he's made a clever joke. "Well. Only to keep the treasurer from hunting us both down."

She's kidding, gesturing to the two men who have just approached Mother with nervous sweat shining on their foreheads, but Sylvain grabs her and tugs her close to kiss her anyway. 

"Sylvain!"

It's the treasurer's son he's worried about, _ especially _ if he sees her in the dress Mother's just unwrapped to admire and show them. "Then maybe I'll come along next time. Maybe learn how to put your dresses _on_ instead of just tear them _off_."

Mother's not in earshot. But Sylvain lowers his voice anyway, and is gratified when Mercedes blushes like he's being seductive instead of afraid.

* * *

They’ve been wide awake in bed for hours now.

Mercedes struggles to say something, and Sylvain slows his already-slow stroking to let her speak. Her fast breaths come out almost like little sobs, and he’s starting to withdraw from under her nightgown even more when she emits a frustrated cry and tilts her hips up.

Sylvain laughs like he’s won some sort of contest and curls his fingers inside her again.

* * *

Mother calls him Miklan by accident at the last family supper before the trip to Fhirdiad, and the dining room falls silent.

“Sylvain,” she corrects herself, tacking the name on to the sentence about which horses he planned on bringing. As if the damage hadn’t been done.

“The two chestnuts,” he replies, _as if the damage hasn’t been done_. “Maybe the sixteen-hands black, too.”

And supper goes on. Mercedes radiates discomfort next to him, and Father’s lip curls like his bear meat has bitten him back, but Sylvain keeps his expression even, his grip on his knife from trembling.

They leave the dining room eventually and pretend they can’t hear his father growling at his mother. Mercedes doesn’t say anything, and Sylvain lets her take his hand on their walk back, but he forces himself to relax. It’s happened before, and while it always fills him with some repulsive mix of rage, disgust, shame, and grief, Mother’s slip-ups seem to bother his parents more than they do him.

* * *

“Sylvain, we’re in the library!”

They are. It’s true.

“Then I guess we better be real quiet, huh?”

What follows is the strangest, most erotic, silent argument Sylvain has ever had. Their mouths aren’t used for debating or their hands for fighting. He thought he’d had Mercedes trapped perfectly in her favorite reading room, but she refuses to leave the bookcase she’d been browsing while he paws her like a desperate teenager.

He had been hoping to watch the way her face changes were he to unclasp the hooks of her bodice and let one hand sneak under the lace, the other under her skirts. But the second the first hook breaks free, Sylvain feels _her_ hand slip into his pants with hardly any warning. And now he can’t look at her, because he’s burying his face into her neck cursing kisses against her skin.

Sylvain will make Mercedes come first. He swears it, silently. She lets him touch her, bite her, make her breaths come hard and uneven, even though she’s clearly trying to outlast him. 

They get each other off against a millennium’s worth of Fódlan civil wars. Afterwards, Mercedes is embarrassed enough that Sylvain gets the hint and offers to take both their handkerchiefs to their quarters himself while she freshens up.

* * *

It was Ingrid who was afraid of lightning as a kid, not him, but Sylvain still wakes screaming when the bedroom shatters white with electric light. He’s not quite conscious, barely aware of Mercedes pushing him down to the bed and whispering meaningless soothing words that somehow get him back to sleep.

_"Not bad, for a bunch of spoiled rotten children_.”

He learns later in the gloomy morning that a group of brigands have set up camp in a crumbling fortress too similar in age to the one he’s tried to forget about. Gautier forces wipe them clean and are back in the barracks before the afternoon is up. The thieves’ leader hadn’t been much of a leader. Most had abandoned him the second they’d seen the banners bearing the Gautier Crest descending upon their ramshackle excuse for a haven.

* * *

Mercedes is napping on the bed when Sylvain comes back from sparring with the lord of the manor’s son. The family’s stopped at a minor noble’s summer home in Itha, the perfect halfway point between Castle Gautier and Fhirdiad. It’s not quite summer, so the rooms are drafty, but that apparently hasn’t stopped Mercedes from falling asleep, embroidery still in hand.

Sylvain, drenched in sweat and satisfied with his new bruises, stops in the doorframe just to stare. The way she’s curled up now, with her arm squished awkwardly under her ear and the embroidery pressed to her chest, shows Mercedes had convinced herself she’d only be “resting her eyes,” as she always says. But the even rise and fall of her chest says her eyes have been _resting_ for quite some time.

The glint of a needle still in her hand shakes Sylvain from his ridiculous, besotted gaping. “You’re gonna kill me someday if you don’t stab yourself first,” he mumbles to her sleeping form, heading to the bed. He tries to extract the needle from her delicate grip as carefully as he can, but she makes a petulant little noise and stretches, nearly poking him straight through the palm in the process.

Sylvain places the needle in a safer place on the nightstand while Mercedes blinks bleary blue eyes at him. “Morning, beautiful.”

“Morning? Oh, no—it can’t have—”

“Don’t worry. It’s only evening.” Sylvain laughs at the face she makes and brushes her hair away from her face. “Traveling take it out of you?”

“I suppose. I’ve never been very good at moving from bed to bed so quickly.”

She’s not awake and has no clue what she’s saying. Sylvain doesn’t care. Too delighted by the opportunity, he tackles her and burrows his face against her neck. “So you’ll stay in mine for the night, huh?”

“You’re so sweaty.” She squirms against him, but he can hear her smile, so he just grinds against her.

“You’re not sweaty _enough_.”

Sylvain lets himself be pushed back, though, because yes, he feels gross. And there’s something so satisfying about getting nice and clean only to get riled up and filthy again. Mercedes is tracing a spot on her neck when he rolls off the bed, but it’s not _the_ spot, and she looks thoughtful beneath her blush.

“What?”

Mercedes just fixes him with a scrutinizing look. Sylvain runs his thumb under his chin and squints. “Something on my face?”

“You haven’t shaved today?”

It’s...a weird question.

“No? Should I have?” 

Mercedes tilts her head and points to the spot on her neck, and…

“Oh. Sorry. Does it hurt?” The skin looks a little irritated, a little pink from the way he was enthusiastically rubbing his scruff on it. 

“I just never noticed before.” Mercedes wrinkles her nose, and it’s so _cute_ that Sylvain feels his heart explode. She leaps off the bed before he can do anything about it, though, because Goddess help the two of them, but she’s gotten so damned good at reading when he’s about to jump her while he’s constantly taken by surprise. “I’m going to make some chamomile while you’re in the bath. I’m so very tired! We barely slept a wink last night.”

“No, we really didn’t,” Sylvain purrs, and his grab for her is more performatory than anything. But she’s sweet about it and makes a fuss for him, even swatting his hand for good measure.

It’s a shame that Mercedes is back asleep when Sylvain emerges from the bath, because he’d realized she hadn’t exactly answered him if he’d hurt her. But she’s asleep, unaskable, and he doesn’t want to wake her for something she’s probably already healed away, anyway.

* * *

“I don’t—I don’t want to _know_ that!”

Felix would sound a lot more outraged if his voice hasn't cracked halfway through that sentence and a blush isn’t painted on his cheeks. He hasn’t hit Sylvain at the end of this story, which is telling even ignoring the fact that he’d let Sylvain finish the story at all.

Sylvain does hit _him_, though; he punches his shoulder as hard as he feels his glee necessitates. “What, you think guys are the only ones who talk about their conquests? Don’t be naive, Felix! Ladies like to talk, too. And send _detailed_ letters, apparently.”

“I am _not_ —” Felix’s voice _ squeaks _ when it breaks, and he coughs way too loud to clear his throat. “I am not a ‘conquest.’ She’s my _wife_.”

Sylvain nods sagely and resists the urge to ruffle Felix’s hair. Felix and Annette had arrived at the palace the day before the House Gautier parade had. This was, apparently, long enough for Felix to have familiarized himself with the training grounds, and meant he had even been willing to hang out in the palace’s grand reception hall for people-watching instead of forcing Sylvain to keep company with his training dummy. And maybe act as its replacement, once Felix had destroyed it.

“Well, your _wife_ seems pleased. And I just wanted to congratulate you, my dear son.” Sylvain clutches his chest and sighs, wiping a not-quite-imaginary tear from his eye. “All that sword-polishing finally paid off—”

“_Stop_.”

“—even _ you_ know when it’s time to put your _sword_ in its _sheathe_—”

“Sylvain, I’m warning you—”

“—but honestly, when Mercedes read me the letter, I just thought, who even _raised_ you? I know _I_ never taught you what happens if you use—”

The tell-tale ring of steel on leather alerts Sylvain he has teased a bit too much. Felix has jumped off the bench and has the blade of his current favorite sword aimed in the general vicinity of Sylvain’s throat. It’s vague enough to be more of a warning than a real threat, but he’s just so pink and adorable that Sylvain is fast to extinguish the crackling flames he hadn’t realized had jumped to his own fingers. He raises both palms in surrender, and Felix drops his own weapon, too, and sinks back next to him with a sigh about Sylvain not learning _enough_ reason.

With that sword trailing mindlessly but confidently in his fingers, that leap to defend honor, that snark, and that relaxed posture beside him despite all that…

Felix looks an awful lot like Glenn. Or how Glenn was supposed to look someday, Sylvain thinks.

“It’s kind of weird, though, right?” he asks Felix in lieu of an apology. Felix barely raises an eyebrow and says nothing. He takes that as encouragement. “You know. Ingrid and Dimitri. Being...Ingrid and Dimitri.”

Felix scoffs. Or laughs. It’s hard to tell with him. “They’re weird.”

“No, I mean, yeah, but that’s not what I meant.” 

“Get to the point, Sylvain.” Felix takes out a dagger—from where?—and starts trimming his cuticles. 

Who even _is_ this guy?

Sylvain hums, searching for words. “I don’t know. Just, like, Ingrid being pregnant, and with Dimitri’s kid…” Felix hasn’t even twitched. Sylvain leans forward. “It doesn’t, I don’t know, bother you? Get to you?”

“Why would it?” Felix does sound annoyed now, and Sylvain winces, prepared for another invitation to eat steel. But the other man doesn’t stop his grisly manicure. “Don’t tell me you’re being stupid about Ingrid actually being a woman with a vagina. Or a sex drive, I guess.”

Sylvain nearly chokes on air and dies.

“_Words_?” he wheezes, which doesn’t make sense, and Felix seems to agree, because he’s put his dagger down and is staring at him with something almost like concern. Now it’s Sylvain’s turn to clear his throat. “Goddess above. Don’t...don’t say those words in the same sentence as ‘Ingrid’ without giving me some warning first, huh, buddy?”

Felix cracks a smile. “Ah. So you _are_ being stupid about it.” He leans his head back on his hands and slouches against the back of the bench. “The weirdest part to think about is the boar king, though. Can you imagine how embarrassed he’d be if Ingrid gave birth to piglets?”

Sylvain just stares at him, trying to read his face. That glimmer of a smile is still quirking the corners of his lips, the creases by his eyes curiously free of tension.

He looks like Glenn still, but he also looks like Felix. Felix, who’s friends with him, and with Ingrid. And maybe Dimitri still, somewhere, deep, deep, deep down beneath layers of blood and grief and grime.

“You’re joking,” Sylvain says to a dead man’s brother, to the young man who’s his oldest best friend. The smile drops from Felix’s face like a scowl had punched it off. Sylvain pushes himself off the bench and crouches in front of him, peering closer at his face. “You _are_. You’re _joking_ about ‘the boar king’ and his—!”

Felix knees him in the chest, and Sylvain coughs while trying to say ‘piglets.’

* * *

A flash of pink distracts Sylvain from Ashe’s excited babbling. Dedue’s looming tall and proud behind him and Mercedes, not even scanning the area for a flash of blond hair and eyepatch, while Mercedes heaps more food onto her plate. She and Ashe had successfully bullied Dedue into cooking a feast of a picnic à la Duscur, and now the four of them are lounged in a beautiful but private little courtyard digging in. 

“‘Scuse me,” Sylvain apologizes to Ashe, whose eyes have gone big with surprise and embarrassment. “I just saw—just gonna go say hi.”

It’s not much of an explanation. But Hilda better have a _really _good one.

“Oh, hey!” she chirps when he follows the trail of trunk-toting servants to reach her and her two companions. “I would have thought you’d be too busy to say hi to little old me!”

“Never too busy for _you_,” Sylvain smirks. “Don’t mind me, though. I’ll follow behind you _three_.”

“Suit yourself.” Hilda shrugs, Linhardt’s expression doesn’t change, but the gauntleted hand wrapped around Hilda’s waist tightens its grip. Caspar, to his credit and Sylvain’s shock, doesn’t say anything, either.

Sylvain keeps glancing over his shoulder as they walk to the guest wings. He’s probably appearing more suspicious than those three are combined, but they’re admittedly in the _royal palace_, which is absolutely crawling with Knights of Seiros in addition to the royal guards, actual royalty, and the Archbishop himself.

“Okay,” Hilda sighs and stretches once they’re safely in what are, apparently, her rooms. Linhardt’s gone off to his own. Caspar, unsurprisingly, remains. “I don’t know _how_ you manage to ooze ‘big brother’ energy, given your lack of experience, but—”

“Hilda, are you insane?” Sylvain hisses. “If the Prof—if Dimitri sees him, or, or, the Archbishop, you might be convicted of _treason_.”

Hilda looks unimpressed, but Caspar cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders. “That a threat, Gautier?”

Sylvain narrows his eyes and holds his ground. “No. I’m serious, man. You shouldn’t be here.”

“So if you’re not gonna make this a big deal, then we got no problem.” Caspar offers him a sharp smile. Hilda puts her hand on his arm, but no one else has moved.

“He didn’t _do_ anything,” she argues.

“Hilda, he literally fought against us! With the Death Knight—”

“You killed my friends!” Caspar shouts, subtlety be damned, apparently. Sylvain can practically see the vein throbbing in his forehead and wishes he had a lance, not a sword strapped to his back. 

And the thought makes him feel guilty right away.

“That’s my point,” he snaps, trying to reign the situation in. “You’re already getting pissed and ready to start swinging. What’re you gonna do the second someone mocks the Empire, or—or someone we used to know? Hell, Caspar, what if the Archbishop runs into you? You _know _ he’ll recognize you, and he’s not the only one.”

Caspar’s almost vibrating with anger, and Hilda hasn’t unlatched herself from his arm, like she’s the only thing preventing him from running rampant.

“Sylvain, relax,” she tells him instead. “We’re going to get him pardoned. Caspar’s a second son, and it’s not really like he was _invested_ in the war or committed any _crimes_.”

“Dimitri may not see it that way. Or Ingrid. Or any of the ruling Houses.”

Finally, Caspar shrugs himself out of Hilda’s restraint. “It’ll be fine. Hilda’s not my only surviving friend, you know. Like Ashe. Hilda said he’s buddies with what’s-his-name, Dimitri’s bodyguard, the Duscur guy.”

“Dedue.”

“Yeah, him! They’re always together or whatever. It’ll be fine. We won’t have a problem unless _you_ decide we do.” Caspar throws himself down on the couch and lets the pillows go flying with the force of his armor on their fabric.

“I mean, do what you will, but _I_ don’t want to risk my neck because I couldn’t talk Hilda out of—wait, Hilda, do _not_ tell me Caspar’s going to be here the entire moon.”

Hilda gives him that _look_ of hers that tells him she thinks he’s being an idiot. “No, I invited my lover to the biggest fancy party of our lifetimes so he could carry my stuff and then kiss him goodbye before I dance alone under a full moon.”

“Well, I did carry your stuff.”

“_And_ I’m going to make out with him _so hard_ at the ball,” Hilda adds, but it’s directed less at Caspar and more as a threat to Sylvain. He puts his face in his hands.

“Please tell me his hearing is before the ball.”

“Probably.”

“_Probably_?”

Hilda snorts and crosses her arms. “Goddess, you’re so annoying! You’re _not_ my brother, remember? I’ll work it out with Ingrid or Ashe or the Professor or whoever, but trust me, dear. It’s going to be fine!”

Sylvain throws his hands in the air. “Okay. Fine.”

“Fine!”

He’s just about ready to storm out, but Caspar’s frozen with something unpleasant burning in his glare, and Hilda’s eyes are huge and shiny with what Sylvain fears are genuine tears. She’s stroking her hair fast and frantic in a nervous gesture so like Mercedes that Sylvain hesitates.

“I’m going to talk to Ingrid.”

Caspar launches himself off the couch. “Don’t you _fucking_—”

Sylvain pushes a wind spell at him, and for once, it’s decent enough that it actually blows him back some safe paces away.

“I’m just going to tell her Hilda wants to talk to her, and _soon_. She’ll be curious enough to make it a priority, okay? I don’t want you to get hurt. Either of you,” he adds.

Hilda lets out a huge sigh that sounds like the start of a sob. “Thank you.”

Sylvain waits, and after a long, tense few seconds, Caspar grits out, “Yeah.”

It’s enough. Sylvain closes the door behind him and goes to find Her Majesty the Queen.

* * *

Her Majesty the Queen, when Sylvain tracks her down, is in the middle of a conversation with Linhardt, of all people. Given how clearly Ingrid is showing—”and glowing!” Annette and Mercedes had giggled before Sylvain politely extracted himself from that conversation—he supposes it’s not a big surprise to see the continent’s leading Crest scholar latching onto her. Still, he feels many layers of discomfort interrupting them.

Fortunately, Ingrid tears herself away at the sight of him. “There you are!” she grins, beckoning him over with the hand _not_ resting on her small, round belly. Sylvain forces a matching smile onto his lips and approaches. “I thought you were avoiding me.”

“Not more than usual,” he says, and is rewarded with a half-hearted swat. 

“Linhardt was just telling me about how he’s actually applying himself these days,” Ingrid tells him with a sly smile aimed at the scholar in question. “Guess it only took an entire war to make it happen, huh?”

Sylvain suddenly suffers from a brief, painful prophetic sight, a vision of Hilda screaming as Caspar goes down swinging in the middle of court as guards try to drag him to prison assaulting his mind’s eye.

“Yes,” Linhardt agrees quickly, much to Sylvain’s shock, “it seems my revulsion for blood finally served a purpose. Here’s hoping it won’t take another war for me to convince Kingdom publishers a former Imperial scholar’s work is worth distributing.”

An awkward silence descends upon the trio. “I apologize,” Ingrid says, sounding genuine. “I forgot myself. It won’t happen again. And I...commend you for how many important breakthroughs you’ve made. I’ll speak with the educational advisor myself.”

“Thank you.”

The air around them relaxes, and Sylvain’s horrific premonition dissipates in his imagination. “Hilda’s here now,” he changes the subject. Seems as good a time as any. “She had something she wanted to ask you, I think. Said it was urgent.”

Ingrid blinks. “Oh. That’s...interesting. Did she say what it was?”

“No.” Not _quite_ a lie. Hilda hadn’t really been specific. Or had asked for this. “Just that she wanted to, uh, see you soon.”

“Hm. Okay. I hope it’s nothing too dire.”

Linhardt’s piercing him with a stare just past the “curious” side of “suspicious.” Sylvain meets his eye and offers an imperceptible nod. He’s about to announce his excuses and return to the picnic when Ingrid asks, “Have you seen the Archbishop today, Sylvain?”

He has.

Everyone has.

The Archbishop’s a hot commodity, even more than usual. It’s not only the knights and guards and church figures and lords who vye for his attention. Everyone they’ve ever fought with wants a piece of the man, let alone their friends and generals.

But beyond some brief pleasantries, Sylvain hasn’t gotten to sit down with a drink or board game. Maybe later, once the Blue Lions can gather together without so many sycophants scuttling underfoot.

“Only in passing. What, I need to play messenger boy for you, too?” Ingrid raises her eyebrows in an expression more reminiscent of their childhood than her new role as Queen, and Sylvain winks in apology. “No, really, what’s up?”

“I was just curious. I’d kind of been hoping to talk to his wife. She’s the Captain of the Guard here, you know.”

“I did not know. Neat.” 

“They’re talking about...having children,” Ingrid says to her shoes. Her flustered demeanor would be endearing if not for—

The woman in question?

The topic?

The Archbishop?

The way her tunic has been let out?

The way it’s not let out too many times, like he’d pretended not to notice when they were kids and the harvest was poor?

The way it sparkles with blue silk and gold thread?

Linhardt’s eyes lighting up?

“My, I knew the Garland Moon was a romantic one,” he notes, “but I suppose the same can be said of being cooped up in the winter moons. Don’t you people have anything better to do?”

Ingrid whirls on Linhardt, and Sylvain is _ so glad _ it’s not him this time. His stomach lurches, and he can’t even enjoy the sound of Linhardt’s confused half-apologies and Ingrid berating him for him, because he’s _ trapped _waiting for Her Majesty to give him the message or some sort of delivery to make, and—

“We’re all old,” Ingrid says, and Sylvain snaps back to attention. Linhardt appears unscathed save for a pout on his face and a wrinkle in his collar from where Ingrid had grabbed and shaken him. “Everyone’s getting married, or having babies, or both.”

Sylvain can’t say anything to that.

Ingrid’s laugh is bitter when she says, “I wonder how many of us would have ended up with each other. Back at the Academy, I mean. It was kind of an...incestuous place, in a way. Everyone flirting with everyone, hoping for a successful match.”

Linhardt shrugs. “Such is the way of this world.”

She sighs again, and this time when she speaks, both hands are on her full belly. Sylvain can’t look at her. “Do you remember Dorothea? And when she—rescued me from that awful engagement?”

Neither man replies.

“Not to dredge up bad memories,” Ingrid rushes to add, forging ahead anyway, “but after we returned to the monastery...We talked. And she sang me a lullaby that night. And we knew full well how likely it was for us to wind up in, ah, imperfect marriages, ones we didn’t quite choose for ourselves. But…” Movement in his peripherals draws Sylvain’s attention back to her. She’s carefully stroking her belly, and Sylvain fights to stay still. “We always knew we’d love our children no matter what marriages brought them.”

Linhardt, too, is curiously silent. Like even he knows now isn’t the time to bring up Crests.

And it only took a _war_ and the death of their friends to shut him up.

Ingrid’s voice is thick with tears when she says, “I can’t help but wonder, now that I’m in love, and...and Queen, and talking babies with friends and soldiers...What kind of person would she find me? Would she have found happiness, too?”

There’s nothing to say to that. 

Happiness didn’t come to those who defended Enbarr’s walls, gates, and streets. Ingrid found happiness at the cost of losing sight of former friends amidst a swarm of soldiers and flames. It was easier for Sylvain, too, to follow Dimitri into the palace than it was to stay behind with the healers and reserve forces-turned-executioners, to hunt for familiar faces in a sea of unfamiliar corpses.

Linhardt, of course, is the one to speak up next. His silence had been nice while it lasted.

“It’s not really befitting the Queen to dwell on such things,” he contributes with his usual tact, blundering on even as Ingrid’s expression shifts from sorrowful to murderous. “Nor is it befitting the Ingrid I know. If you remember the Dorothea who sung you lullabies, then she remembers the Ingrid who fell asleep listening to them.”

The two of them stare at his placid expression. Linhardt’s not exactly paying much attention to them, speaking more to himself, but what else is new?

“Fighting your pleasant memories with guilt from the unpleasant ones does a better job destroying the friendships you once had than trying to kill each other in a war you never wanted to fight,” he continues. “And if I may be so bold, Your Majesty—”

“I think you’ve been plenty bold.”

“—the Dorothea I know would find you just the same great woman today as you always were. Her happiness I can’t begin to fathom a guess, but like attracts like, as they say.” Linhardt tucks his hands in his robe pockets, a private little smile curling his lips, and Sylvain has never seen him look as human as he does in this moment.

Ingrid stretches out a hand. “Linhardt…”

“I’ll go find Shamir,” Sylvain mutters to no one. His footsteps’ echoes chase him down the hall.

* * *

“You’re...participating in the joust?” 

Sylvain presses a quick kiss to the back of Mercedes’s limp hand. “Yeah, why not? Seems like fun. Gives me one last chance to humiliate King Father-to-be before he has royal babies to impress.”

He also will have the opportunity to set Ashe up with some dashing knight or another, maybe even a giggling lady-in-waiting, because it’s pretty painful to know Ashe is spending more time in the kitchens than the barracks. And the apron he insists on wearing doesn’t flatter his figure.

Sylvain doesn’t mind throwing a fight in the name of true love. Or sex. Or both.

Mercedes withdraws her hand and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s just...I’m worried. For you.”

“For _me_?”

Sylvain frowns, and while he doesn’t quite want to say it aloud, her concern nettles him. Even were Ingrid not halfway to motherhood, he’d still be the best horseback rider in their friend group. Dimitri’s the best with a lance, of course, but horses don’t like his lance even though they _do _like him somewhat.

Mercedes sips from her wine and refuses to look at him. “I’m just...remembering.”

“Remembering? Remembering what?”

“Was this at Fort Merceus?” an uninvited voice asks. The Archbishop settles next to Mercedes with a bottle of the same wine to refill her glass. He offers it to Sylvain, who declines, and pours himself a new glass.

Mercedes nods, but her cheeks are flushed, and Sylvain’s willing to bet it’s with embarrassment, not drink.

“What? What happened in Fort Merceus?” 

The Archbishop waits for Mercedes to answer, but she only gulps her wine down. At least she declines the next refill, but she won’t look at either of them. The Archbishop answers him instead. “It was the Death Knight. Knocked you clear off your horse into the wall.”

Sylvain furrows his brow and watches Mercedes while the Archbishop talks, but the Archbishop is looking at her, too.

“We thought you were dead. _I _thought you were dead. But—but Annette found you. While Felix was—”

“She screamed for me,” Mercedes cuts him off. “Don’t you remember this?”

“Nope,” he says, mildly guilty. “I mean, I remember being in the infirmary for a long time. Felix was pissed.”

“You were really lucky,” the Archbishop says, nodding at Mercedes. “The Death Knight had just caught sight of her, running like hell your way. And then Felix—”

“No, it was Ingrid,” Mercedes corrects him hoarsely. “Ingrid killed him—the Death Knight. She stopped him, because my shoulder was—”

“Right, sorry. Ingrid killed him. And Mercedes, I thank the Goddess every day your Crest saved you both. You both…”

Sylvain slams his glass on the table and gets to his feet. He doesn’t remember _any_ of this.

Manuela had told him he’d suffered a concussion. That it made sense he wouldn’t remember when his head had cracked almost _too_ hard on that ancient stone. That he’d been in and out of consciousness and would naturally have some confusion. But that the battle had been won and that was all that mattered, and Sylvain had agreed.

“It’s a _fucking_ joust,” he snaps at them. He manages to keep himself relatively quiet, and only one curious face—Annette’s—glances up in the royal banquet hall. “Look, sorry, it’s just...it’s okay and I’m alive. So if nothing else, this’ll give me good practice so it doesn’t happen again.”

Mercedes crosses her arms. “You don’t need to tell me it’s illogical; I know. But I can’t help how I feel.”

“I didn’t say you were being illogical.”

“Well, there’s no cause for you to swear like that.”

The Archbishop observes them in silence, as usual. His careful blank mask has slipped over his face again, and Sylvain’s anger cools into solid ice. He sits back down.

“I’m sorry.” He’s not. “So, what, are you not participating in the joust, Pr—Archbishop?”

The Archbishop slowly shakes his head, not quite meeting either of their eyes. “It wouldn’t be prudent of me.”

_Prudent_.

“Perfect. Then you can get some sparring in.” Sylvain gets up again and waits. The Archbishop turns to Mercedes, but bafflement is written over her face, too. “With me. It won’t give me an unfair advantage over the competition if I train with a pro who’s _not_ entering, right?”

“Now?”

“No time like the present.”

The two holier-than-holy people in front of him glance out the window at the grey sky almost in unison. Sylvain laughs, stretches, and keeps the easy grin on his face. “Resistance training, or something.”

He’s stunned when the Archbishop agrees and stands, too. But Sylvain’s never been one to question consent so freely given.

* * *

The Archbishop follows him to a small grove in the carefully-cultivated woods just outside the city walls. They’ve passed the walk through the misty afternoon in relative silence, but the air is electric with unstruck lightning and confusion. But fresh air is fresh air, and the more they walk, the slower Sylvain’s racing pulse becomes.

“Is this where you ‘collect my debt?’”

“Huh?” Sylvain pauses in oiling the training lance to look at the Archbishop doing the same. “Debt?”

The Archbishop stares at him for an oddly long time, shakes his head, and returns to the task. “Nothing. Just something you said to me once. About my Crest.”

Sylvain’s lip curls. “Let’s not talk about Crests right now. You don’t need one to knock people off a horse.”

“Speaking of, I’m surprised you didn’t want to practice with them. With your horses, I mean.”

Sylvain sighs. “Honestly, if you can believe it, I’ve been getting soft. I feel like I ride way too much and train just...not enough. I use swords more often than lances, and even they’re mostly decoration at this point.” He starts stretching while the Archbishop folds his cloak neatly and begins his own routine. “I’d join the guards on assignments more often, but it makes my parents nervous.”

“They’re afraid of losing the heir, I take it. Unless—?”

The Archbishop trails off meaningfully, and a spike of old anger shoots through Sylvain’s gut. He shifts into battle stance and readies his weapon. “Unless?” he taunts.

The other man does not realize it is a taunt. “I know House Gautier is...particular about its Crests,” he says, testing the blunted edge of his lance, “and which ones it...Come on. You know I know all that.”

He _does_.

Sylvain _does_ know how much he knows.

Something inside him cracks open.

“You don’t know a lot,” Sylvain spits, “for someone who was supposed to be a Professor.” And before either of them call for attack, Sylvain whips the lance straight down like an axe.

The Professor parries like it’s the only instinct he has. “Wait, you—”

Sylvain reels back, boots skidding on grass, and plants his weapon into the dirt. “You think a handful of years with some Crest-bearing nobles gives you some great insight into our world, do you?”

They’re circling each other somehow. Sylvain can feel his old Professor picking him apart, looking for weaknesses. Goddess help him, but Sylvain won’t give him any. He feints, just to experiment, and the Archbishop dodges without much effort. He jabs forward again. “You missed out on five years. That’s a _lot_ of politics to ignore.”

The Archbishop rolls to the side and swipes with the lance, and Sylvain hops over it like he’s a kid. His silence infuriates him. “Rejecting the Ten Elites’ legacy...It gave people hope, you know? Even I know that, and I’m a direct descendant.” Sylvain leaps back from another stab and narrowly misses a patch of slippery soil. “But,” he adds, catching his footing, “plenty of people, of—of girls still knew their worth, and that it wasn’t cheapening any time soon.”

The Archbishop stays where he is, lance held loosely, tauntingly, silently. Two can play at that. Sylvain stays still, too. “It wasn’t _luck_ or _Crests_ that saved my life,” he says. “It was an army. Soldiers. Souls. So what, they weren’t worthy of the Goddess’s love, then? That’s the Archbishop’s official statement? What’s _my_ worth to the Archbishop, now that—”

The Archbishop, for his part, feints to the right, only to turn the spike into a sidesweep. But he’s tried this trick on Sylvain, back when he was just 'Professor' and not the embodiment of the Church, and Sylvain can block, repel, shove him away with ease.

“What am I worth to you, _Professor_?” Sylvain snarls again. His anger has a focus now, a target, something colored like a holy painting and a blank stare to project any emotion onto. And right now it looks a lot like hatred. The training lance hangs heavy in his hands, point dragging lines in the soft soil. "Is my life even anything more than a Crest to you?"

He knows that's not true. He knows it hard and loud in his chest. But throwing these accusations feels good.

It _feels_.

The Archbishop narrows his eyes. His hands clench around his own training lance’s grip, and he remains where he is even as Sylvain approaches. A thin trail of sliced dirt follows him.

"I'd ask you if anything matters to you, but even I know that's going too far." Sylvain stops a healthy distance away, just in the middle of the circle of trees. "Shamir matters, doesn't she? She doesn't have a Crest. Ashe doesn't. Other little Lions you fostered didn't. So what is it about mine?" Sylvain hefts his lance. "What is it about my _wife's_?"

He charges at the other man before his mind has caught up. The _tlang_ of their training weapons clashing rings through the fog. Sylvain leaps back when the Archbishop slashes down, and a huge oak leaf falls where he'd just been, sliced clean in two by the lance’s blunt point.

"It's not about Crests."

The Archbishop sounds placid as a sheep.

"It's _always_ about Crests," Sylvain snaps back. He dodges another swipe and lunges forward in the same movement. The Archbishop rolls to the side. "Let me teach you something, Professor. It's my turn." A lance tip flies out of nowhere. "I said it's my turn," he barks while swatting it aside with his own.

He hits it harder than intended. The other pole snaps clean in half and smashes into a tree trunk point-first, fully embedded. The Archbishop is left with a jagged stick, a confounded glare, and a rage-fueled former student stalking towards him. 

"You wouldn't have been here without a Crest. You wouldn't have been anyone's 'Professor' without your Crest." With each sentence, Sylvain thumps the shaft of his lance. "You wouldn't have been any use without your Crest. Fuck, none of us would have bothered going to the Academy without Crests, without having them or hoping to marry—hoping to _fuck_ our way into them. You and me, we wouldn't be having this little conversation here without—"

"I've watched you die, Sylvain."

Sylvain's hand freezes mid-air. The Archbishop's face is back to blankness, an impassivity Sylvain hasn't seen in at least seven years.

"I've watched you die. I've been too late so many times. I've seen your throat slit, your heart pierced. Skin eaten by miasma, or just by a Demonic Beast. Once, I saw only pieces of you while you screamed because you hadn't _quite_ died yet."

Is Sylvain imagining it alongside these outlandish images shoved into his mind, or is the Archbishop's skin a little green like his hair?

"And sometimes I wasn't even there. I'd find Felix holding you together. One time, in the beginning, Dimitri stepped over your cooling corpse like you weren't even there. And the worst parts were when I didn't know until after the battle was over, when I couldn't even find you among the bodies except know you were missing. Because that meant I'd have to live it over and make sure it didn't happen again. And for—too many people, I didn't have the luxury of making that call, because the victories were too great."

A branch from the broken lance's tree groans and falls to the forest floor. Sylvain jumps, but the Archbishop doesn't cease in his list of deluded, despairing words.

"And I have lived that with every single one of my friends. My students. The people I—love. The people I _love_." The Archbishop's voice breaks in a sudden display of emotion, and except for the way his eyes brighten, his face remains expressionless. Like Edelgard's single shocked eye behind the Flame Emperor's cracked mask. "People _you_ love. How does a person move forward from that? How does someone turn back the hands of time with—with Goddess-given power and manage to forget what one of your most beloved friends looks like _without a face_?"

The Archbishop's wild expression stills for one terrible, peaceful moment. Sylvain is unprepared when his lips twist in a snarl and his eyes go bright with more fury than tears. "You can forget you died, because you lived to see _this_, even though _I'll_ never forget it," he says, voice dangerously soft. He raises his ruined weapon, shouts, "And you say your life is worth _nothing_ to me?" and charges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you didn't mind the relative Lack of Sexy, but the chapter got, uh, much longer than anticipated.
> 
> Oh, it's also been CRAZY that so many of you have been reaching out to me??? like outside this site????? thank you for the low-key social media stalking! If you want to hang more, I'm honored! you can find me on twitter [@NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites) or something, bc my Discord handle changes way too often for me to put it here...


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for minor violence/pain at first, which I expect you're a bit prepared for, given last chapter.
> 
> If you put "I'm just gonna leave this here, I got nothing to say," doesn't that kind of set the tone anyway? oops. that's what I got for ya. Well, reading your thoughts/suppositions/keysmashes/screaming is always an utter delight, so...I hope I can read more this chapter!!!

* * *

Sylvain forgets everything the Archbishop has just said in favor of dodging, ducking, parrying. There’s something deadly and controlled in his fit of wild rage, something that follows Sylvain’s every movement away. Something much less cautious but no less analytical in his swipes and strikes than they were in school, when his Professor would try to prove a point by beating Sylvain into submission and waiting for him to rally and correct his mistakes.

There will be no mistakes for the Archbishop to correct here.

Sylvain presses hard against the Archbishop’s stub of a training lance, deflecting a crack to the shoulder, and doesn’t relent when the holy man tries to break free for another swing. He follows up with a smash against the splintered wood, the weight of his own longer and still-intact lance making the Archbishop’s hands shake to repel him. Sylvain notices and feels his smirk grow a little less sane.

“Tired out so soon? Got yourself a nice cushy desk job as Arch—”

The Archbishop punches him in the face.

Sylvain staggers back, blood dribbling out of his mouth, not given much of a breather before the other man jabs at him again with the broken lance. He has the presence of mind to bring both hands up, which fortunately are still holding his own weapon. The broken lance bounces off the solid wood, but the Archbishop just lets it drop and grabs for Sylvain’s lance, too.

He tries to shake him off, but the Archbishop’s manic grip is fused to the shaft. Sylvain spits out the blood trapped on his tongue, and as the Archbishop flinches to avoid the red droplets, he kicks the man straight in the Crest of Seiros emblazoned on his chest. The Archbishop coughs and his grip weakens, but not enough, so Sylvain drops his own and lets the Archbishop lose his tenuous support. Both lance and man fall to the grass.

He’s already rolling out of the way, though, when Sylvain comes down with another stomp. He kind of figured that was unlikely to hit, but the second target—the unbroken, dangerous training lance—cracks under his boot, too, and that’s safer than beating the Archbishop of the Church of Seiros into a pulp.

The thought angers him as soon as it enters his head. The Archbishop of the Church of Seiros should know how to fight _ back_. Forgiveness can come later, but they’ll both need to earn it.

This thought propels Sylvain’s next punch, swinging back in the same motion of ducking the other man’s own strike, and a familiar flash in the shape of Sylvain’s Minor Crest of Gautier flickers in his vision.

It’s only a Minor Crest. It doesn’t manifest itself as obviously the way Felix’s Major Crest of Fraldarius does; when Felix’s triggers in battle, Sylvain can see its shape from partway across the battlefield. But Sylvain’s is personal, like everything else about the stupid thing. Attached to his body like glimmering wings, the last thing too many Imperial soldiers saw before getting impaled on his lance.

But the Archbishop has seen Sylvain’s Crest manifest before. And so he’s prepared to brace the augmented power of the impact even though he knows he can’t quite dodge. He screams when Sylvain’s fist collides with his collarbone with a sickly _ crack_, but he holds his ground and switches tactics with a fierce kick to Sylvain’s knees.

It’s too easy to avoid. And it’s less easy to stamp down on the _ guilt_ Sylvain feels by the sight of the Archbishop with glittering tears in his eyes, bloody teeth bared in a snarl of pain, favoring one shoulder but keeping up that catlike pace and circling. 

Oddly enough, he's relieved when the entire forest clearing glows with an unearthly green as the Archbishop rushes him with the good shoulder, the asymmetrical lines of the Crest of Flames distracting Sylvain from blocking properly. The blow sends him flying backwards, muscles much weaker than the impact can explain. Sylvain forces himself to sit up to see the Archbishop pressing his hand to his once-broken collarbone, intense relief clear on his face.

Sylvain’s hands shake with something similar to cold. The Archbishop’s green eyes fade back to something almost human in color, and Sylvain laughs through the pain, because how could he have forgotten?

It’s _ only _ever been the power of the Goddess and those who love Her that have left Sylvain so weak and defenseless. And of course only _ people like that _would profit from that vulnerability.

The Archbishop’s breathing heavier now, no longer distracted by the agony of a broken bone but losing the rush of adrenaline. _ This would be a good moment to end it,_ Sylvain thinks, not dwelling on what "it" _ entails_, but he’s tired, too, and doesn’t flinch fast enough when he sees gloved hands drag the Archbishop back instants before heavy gauntlets push against his own chest, too.

“The hell is going on here?” a vaguely familiar voice shouts right in his ear.

_ Caspar_.

“Could ask you the same question,” Sylvain tries to quip, but all that comes out is another exhausted laugh. 

“What are you doing? You think trying to murder the Archbishop’s a smart idea, dummy?” Caspar hisses, fear painfully obvious in his voice. 

Well, Caspar really threw his lot in with the wrong crowd. If the son of one of the most powerful Imperial military generals wants a pardon from the Kingdom, the Archbishop, and the Archbishop’s Dagda-born wife, he’ll just have to get in line.

“He wasn’t trying to kill me.”

The Archbishop’s monotone sentence makes Sylvain want to kill him all over again. Caspar’s palms push harder on his chest, like he can feel Sylvain’s muscles tense to attack. The Archbishop turns away from Shamir and her too-casual once-over of his wounds and licks a liquid line of his own blood from his pointer finger. Even as his careful, suspicious gaze bores into him, the Archbishop’s wounds glow pale, pale green and close bit by painful bit.

Shamir snorts and starts to say something that sounds like _ idiot_, but the Archbishop says directly to Sylvain, “I don’t doubt he could have, though.”

Something, _ something_ more complicated and bitter than hatred stagnates the air between them. The way not all the Archbishop’s bruises smooth over, the caution and tension in the line of his jaw, the blank expression and even tone when he speaks…

_ “I’ve watched you die, Sylvain_.”

Sylvain nods, slowly and with as much understanding as he can muster given the soreness in his neck, and the Archbishop flicks his eyes back up to Caspar. Sylvain feels his quick intake of breath and struggles to get to his feet. Caspar comes back to his senses and helps, swinging Sylvain’s arm over his shoulder with oddly soothing phrases like “up and at ‘em” and “you’re all good, man.” Shamir watches every single one of his jerky movements, her expression as unreadable as her partner’s.

“Go,” she tells him, voice flat like the edge of a knife. “And you,” she adds to Caspar, who stiffens again, “I’ll deal with you later.”

Her eyes are still trained on them when Caspar helps Sylvain stagger back to the road to town, her hand on the Archbishop’s arm like she’s trying to restrain him, too. But even though Sylvain can feel sweat racing down the back of his neck, the ache and sting of the extent of his injuries, all he can think about as Caspar keeps him moving is, _ her abs are still completely ripped and flat._

“Can you stand on your own a little?” 

He tries. Mostly succeeds, too, but Caspar lets him lean on him the closer to town they get. It hadn’t felt like too long a fight, and they hadn’t gotten so many hits landed, but what they had was enough, apparently. 

Shamir and her pack of spies are going to _ destroy _him.

“Aren’t you worried?” Sylvain asks Caspar, shrugging in the general direction of the two powerful people they’d left in the woods behind. The movement makes his muscles scream, but fortunately, Caspar isn’t looking at his face and misses his unmanly grimace.

“About what? Oh, who, Shamir?” Caspar shrugs, too, less painfully. “Nah, it’ll turn out okay. Shamir’s really cool. Throws the best right hook I’ve ever felt, too.” The guy’s eyes are shining with a mix of something almost like arousal, respect, and awe.

_ Weirdo _.

“Is that what was going on when you—” Sylvain stumbles, and Caspar half-catches him. He shakes the other man off. “I’m fine.”

“You sure? Do you, did you learn any white healing from Mercedes, maybe? You look like hell, and you don’t really want people asking questions…”

He’s learned it from the Professor, actually, and the bitterness and shame accompanying the thought clouds any confusion he might feel that Caspar remembers his wife’s name beyond “_ the von Martritz girl_.”

So Sylvain stays quiet and puts a glowing hand to his cheek and shoulder and wherever else feels particularly bad. He grits his teeth and tries not to let his relief show too badly. He can feel the bruises fading and some of the cuts sealing closed, but for the more complicated stuff whose pain won’t fade, well…

Rest and poultices are always better for torn ligaments than weak healing magic anyway. And he won’t object to Mercedes fretting over him a bit, even once he manages to apologize up a storm.

His magic must have performed a satisfactory job, however, because Caspar offers him an impressed nod. “Nice. Let’s get Hilda to fix the rest of you, though; she’s really good at this kind of stuff. C’mon, lean on me again.”

Sylvain does, but he keeps sneaking glances at Caspar, who’s whistling as they march like he hadn’t been ready to punch Sylvain in the face the other day, too. 

“What were you doing out there?”

Caspar grins at him, like he’d been waiting for him to ask. “About to get the shit beaten outta me by Shamir.”

Sylvain freezes, and Caspar tugs him impatiently.

“So you—she knows already? And you’re this calm because _ I _got into a fight—”

Caspar’s laugh is too loud for Sylvain’s ears right now. “Nah, man! I asked her to train! We’d only just gotten started when we saw your Crests light up. Better you than me, though, huh? Wish I’d gotten to see some of it before it got all...fight-to-the-death and stuff. At least Shamir knows it’s not _ my _fault, but I bet she thinks you fought well, too. Professor’ll say the same.”

They shamble along through the evening market crowd, Sylvain too stunned to defend himself. Caspar oozes pride, like he’d fought Sylvain’s battle himself, like he hadn’t been ready to kill everyone in the Fhirdiad royal palace himself at some point the last two days.

“You’re kind of a weird guy, Bergliez.”

Caspar’s eternal grin quirks into a toothy smirk. “Some people say that, yeah.” That too-cheerful laugh again. “But some people know fuck-all!”

This time, when he laughs, Sylvain joins, too.

* * *

“Sylvain, I’m so sorry. I hope you can forgive me.”

Sylvain’s barely closed the door. His hands are full of a bouquet of lavender and anemones he’s...borrowed from a vase in Hilda’s room after she and Caspar giggled their way to her bedroom, leaving Sylvain well-wrapped in bandages and guilt settling thick in his stomach. He didn’t trust himself in the market, either from collapsing or having one of Shamir’s spies find him a little too punchable-looking.

“I got you flowers,” he tells Mercedes uselessly. She’s standing by the window, looking over the palace grounds like she’s still waiting for a better version of him to traipse up the stairs. Her lips part at the sight of the pink and purple blooms.

“Oh!”

Sylvain offers them to her and tries to ignore the flush spreading across his cheeks as she takes them. Her lashes are lowered and there’s a twist to her mouth that speaks of shame, but Sylvain can only assume it’s for him.

“Thank you.” Her voice cracks. “I’m so sorry.”

Sylvain squints at her. “_ Sorry_?”

Mercedes nods and pours water into a new vase for the flowers. “I had no reason to raise such a fuss over the joust. It reminded me of..a time I almost lost you. But that has nothing to do with me and the things that make you happy, and—”

“Mercedes, I really—”

“Please, Sylvain.” Mercedes’s lips quaver. She looks miserable, and Sylvain shuts up. “Let me say this. I’ll feel just terrible if I don’t say it now. That...I trust you, and if you get hurt, or if you don’t, it’s because you did what you wanted, not because I _ kept _you from doing something, or…” She laughs on a sigh and fiddles with a fluffy petal. Lavender sprigs float to the floor. “I just know it was wrong of me. I didn’t want you to feel guilty or angry at me.”

Sylvain shakes his head and reaches for her. She nestles into his arms, smelling of lavender and tea and warmth. “I didn’t. It’s okay. Don’t worry about me. I don’t want you to be unhappy.”

“I needed to say it, then. Even if you weren’t angry.”

This apology session has not gone the way Sylvain had expected or feared. He strokes her shoulders while she nuzzles into his chest, shushing her and forgiving her. Because while he wants to say he never was upset, and that she has no need…

Sylvain also knows he _ was_ upset, and that she needs to hear him forgive her.

He’d been hoping she’d say something along the lines of “I trust you to be a good rider” so he can say something lascivious back, deflect from this lavender-scented embrace, but she doesn’t give him that escape. He focuses on the moment, the _ now_, the way he’s come so far to hold her—

_ “I’ve watched you die, Sylvain_.”

They have other things to worry about than jousts and petty squabbles.

* * *

As usual, Sylvain’s family had wanted to make a big deal out of his birthday. But, since this royally-hosted festival must last the entire month, and it would be incredibly unseemly to divert attention onto a different noble House...Sylvain wants to kiss Dimitri and Ingrid both for unwittingly rescuing him from this fate. On the mouth. With tongue, if they so demanded.

He has the presence of mind not to _ tell _Dimitri and Ingrid this, but he does tell Mercedes to make her laugh, and the fourth night of the month, when they and their friends are sitting around drinking and sparring and chatting, he catches a tipsy Mercedes’s eye long enough for her to make a silly kissy-face at him.

Sylvain lets Dimitri believe his red face and shaking shoulders are because he’s drunk.

No one had fussed over Mercedes for her birthday except Sylvain, but he suspects that will change in the future, since her birthday had the misfortune to fall during their preparations to the capital. There hadn’t been enough time to celebrate aside from taking her to her favorite teahouse for some cake and finally, _ finally _trying out Felix’s board game.

Felix will not be pleased to learn they’ve managed to incorporate stripping into the ruleset. But what Felix doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

All this means Sylvain’s expecting a similar type of calm for his birthday this year. Ingrid had asked him if he’d wanted their friend group to go on some sort of adventure, even if it was just a special private banquet, but Sylvain had been quick to turn the kind offer down. He won’t lie and say the relief in her face at being freed from planning something else hadn’t stung, but he also won’t lie to himself and say he’d have spent the whole event _ not _thinking about leaving the second the sun went down.

“You just want to do...nothing?”

Sylvain cuddles his pillow closer and nods into it, satisfied with the lazy feel of his scruff on the silk. He hears Mercedes brushing her hair above him and idly wonders if he’s going to have loose blond strands trapped in his nightclothes.

“You’re going to get bored, doing _ nothing _all day.”

“Maybe I’ll hit Felix with a stick.” Mercedes laughs, and he rolls over on his back to grin at her. “Two sticks.”

“Hmm. I think the Archbishop hit you enough, don’t you?” Mercedes places a loving, glowing hand on the almost-faded bruise on his chest, and they both watch it vanish. Sylvain pushes the thought of the ‘training session’ out of his mind.

“Yeah, but I didn’t say I’d let Felix hit _ me_.”

She giggles again and kisses him, the edges of her short hair tickling his cheeks. When she stretches in the early summer sunlight, the strap of her warm-weather nightgown falls off her shoulder. Sylvain stares at the smooth expanse of skin past the point of ‘subtle’ and keeps staring even after she sighs and tries to tuck the strap back up. His hand flashes up to stop her, catching her fingers in his.

“Oh, come now, Sylvain.”

He leers at her. “You’ll have to do more than _ that_.”

“Oh, will I?” Mercedes bends down, her disdain for his tasteless sense of humor rather unconvincing given how brazenly she’s letting her neckline fall.

“Yep.”

“We’ll see.”

“We will?”

His mouth is inches away from the swells of her breasts. If he lifts his head, he can look down—

Mercedes plants her lips on his unshaven jaw, and he feels her smile when he gasps. “That was a sweet little sound.” She trails kisses down his neck and chest. Sylvain grips her hips and pulls her close.

“Not a lot going on that’s _ sweet _right now, Mercedes.”

“Mm.”

Her breasts are soft against his chest. His torso. His stomach—

She’s still _ kissing _and _licking _and her breasts brush against him through his pants, her fingers are on the clasps—

Mercedes pauses, hearing the hitch in his breath, and the sight of her with her fingers on his clothed but straining erection, looking up at him with uncertainty and excitement, waiting for permission, makes Sylvain wish he had more birthdays in each year. Dying young seems a small price to pay.

“Goddess, you really don’t have to,” he rasps, and Mercedes takes this as invitation enough to finish unbuttoning his pants. She’s become an expert at that lately. Speedy and efficient when needed, painfully teasing when _ not_. 

She smiles, that taunting, beautiful thing she’d shown him when they’d first met and she’d thought so little of him. “I know I don’t,” she says, and his cock springs free. “But I very much want to.”

They have _ never _done this before, but Mercedes seems thrilled by the newness, not as nervous as he’d thought. Her cheeks are the prettiest shade of pink, and with a shaking hand, Sylvain brushes her bangs out of her face to get a better picture. She trails one cruel finger up the underside of his shaft, and it takes all of Sylvain’s willpower not to grab her hair right then. He settles for gripping the sheets so tightly he’s dimly aware of torn threads in his fingers.

He has never been so hard in his life, and he’s not sure he can tell her that right now without risking further mockery.

“Hm,” Mercedes says, mostly to _ herself_ for whatever reason, and Sylvain can feel her breath on his cock. Her tongue peeks out, her lips seal themselves over the tip, she _ sucks_ oh-so-lightly, Sylvain inhales sharply—

That’s the only warning either of them get before Sylvain comes hard, instantly, and everywhere.

Afterwards, they agree maybe getting some fresh air and socializing is a good plan for the day.

* * *

Felix does not agree to a sparring session in which Sylvain hits him and does not get hit in return, but he does sit quietly over games and tea with Mercedes, Annette, Dedue and Ingrid while Dimitri and Sylvain and Ashe go on a highly unsafe ride through the forest. Not a fallen tree goes unjumped over, any bear foolish enough to poke its head out of hibernation to roar at the cacophony of whooping men on horses suffers a quick and merciful death at some lance or another, and the jealousy painted on Ingrid’s face when they return covered in dirt and sweat makes all the brambles and burns worth it.

Maybe, somewhere, someday, people in their station have courtly duties to attend to. Those people are not Sylvain Jose Gautier, but Dimitri and Ingrid certainly are; they leave everyone behind once His Royal Majesty returns from the woods, hand-in-hand like they’re playing house, and Sylvain isn’t feeling so much jealous as he is _ weird_. Felix has to follow them, he grumbles, because he’s a _ Duke_ and the proper head of House Fraldarius and has _ responsibilities_ unlike the birthday boy whose parents yet live. 

“I hope he forgives Dimitri someday,” Mercedes says when the three of them are a speck in the distance. Annette dismisses her concerns with a wave of her hand.

“I think with this stuff, he just likes to complain about how much reading and writing he has to do. I’d help him more if he didn’t insist he can _ do it all himself_.” Annette snorts, and it’s so unladylike that Ashe laughs, too. “I’m just so excited to hear how he’s gonna ask me once he admits he can’t do everything alone. I really can’t wait.”

“You may be waiting some time still,” Dedue says so somberly that Sylvain thinks he might be joking. They spend the rest of Sylvain’s birthday like this, carefree in the sharp chill of late Faerghus spring, then a small dinner with just the five of them after they’ve all bathed the outdoors away. 

Annette fails to hide her disappointment when Sylvain turns down her offer of asking the chefs to whip up a birthday cake for him. “What, is that the only reason you came to my birthday party?” he teases her. “For some birthday sweets?”

“Don’t let Felix hear you say that,” Ashe fake-whispers, and Sylvain’s jaw is about ready to drop off when he realizes that what with the way Mercedes is pink and choking on her wine...he probably has dropped his voice too deep, quirked his lips too much in a smirk, and—ah, yes, he’d winked. 

Another year older, another year no less wiser.

No one has any presents for him “besides our presence,” Annette says with a sharp little punch to his shoulder that he probably deserves. And that’s reason enough for everyone to say good night, and an _ excellent _reason for Sylvain to corner Mercedes the second their bedroom door closes behind them.

“It’s so f-funny to see you forget you’re still...still flirting,” Mercedes manages to gasp when he traces the back seam of her dress, one hand cupping a breast trapped beneath her soft summer bodice.

“Funny, huh?” Sylvain doesn’t really care about her rationale, but he _ does _care about drawing out the little moans she’s trying to restrain; it’s to spite him, he wagers, and the thought excites him. The buttons beneath his fingers begin wrenching themselves free almost without his own interferences, and he mouths each little nub of spine that becomes available to him.

“Is it...a hard habit—ah!” Mercedes squeaks, because he’s just granted her a hard roll of his hips at the word _ hard_, since his eternally-childish sense of timing couldn’t resist. “Ah, Sylvain!”

“Yeah, honey? What was that?”

“Sylvain, why won’t you...do you want me to—” Mercedes positively _ keens _when he bites that sensitive patch of skin on her neck, and he hopes she feels his victorious smile on her skin.

“Yes?”

“Ah…right there—”

Sylvain thinks he knows what she wants to ask. Something about this morning, something about _ don’t you want to pick up where we started, where you finished too soon_? 

And, yes. Goddess knows he wants to. The Goddess, in fact, is probably howling with laughter at his fraying restraint, because even the memory of her _ lips _wrapped around the _ tip _was enough to get his dick rock-hard throughout the day. The ride through the forest had been difficult for many reasons.

But no. If getting blown by his wife is Sylvain’s special celebration of the day, he doesn’t want it. He won’t be able to convince himself _ Mercedes _wants it, too.

There’s only one solution here.

“I just want to unwrap my present,” he purrs right in her ear, and her intense shudder makes for such a beautiful little bit of choreography that her dress falls to pieces in his arms. 

Goddess, but when has a thin summer shift looked so enticing before? Not even on Seiros herself, he’d wager, and Sylvain had _ accidentally _stumbled upon all Ingrid’s ‘secret’ books portraying _ that_.

“S-Sylvain,” Mercedes pants while his mouth assaults her neck and inches down to the back of the lace around her breasts, “you have the sense of humor of an adolescent boy!”

He laughs, because she’s right, but he really can’t resist leaning into that. “No,” he pretends to disagree, “I think you know how much of a _ grown _man I am.” Another long, slow grind between her legs has another moan tearing out of her throat and another dark laugh out of his. “Bed?”

“Bed?” Mercedes echoes dumbly. She lifts her head and tries to face him, but he holds her cheek to keep her still and sucks on her lip like he’s savoring something delicious and rare. 

“Bed,” Sylvain repeats when he releases her. He yanks her back against his hips again. “Or were you gonna give me my birthday sweets standing right here?”

“Your—birthday sweets?”

Oh, this is going to be _ fun_.

Sylvain lets Mercedes spin around this time, lets her kiss him, confusion making her tongue slow and submissive. He groans deep in his throat and allows her to pull him back until she collapses on the mattress. She gets to her shift before him and pulls it off in one fluid motion that almost manages to hide the trembling of her fingers. Sylvain leans back on his knees above her and grins, hand stroking down her breastbone to the lace underneath. He can feel her own heart crashing against her chest as fast as his is.

“You’re a really dressed-up present, huh?”

Her bustier is entirely sewn of pale pink lace, and the pattern and color matches her underwear. Sylvain’s never seen her this _ bare _before, but he knows very well how unlikely it is for women to match their ‘delicates’ so meticulously. And these are far too nice for her to excuse as ‘every-day underthings.’

Mercedes doesn’t even try. She tilts her chin at him, defiant even now, and says, “I wanted you to look at me just like you are now.”

_ Oh, Goddess_.

“Whose present is this, anyway?” he stammers through his grin, reassured when she turns pink as her lace and giggles. That’s enough. He kisses her neck to make her gasp, nibbles a path down the front of her bustier to feel her pulse pick up, thumbs the little peaks underneath to get her writhing between his legs. 

Saints, he wants to strip it clear off her, but this is as naked as she’s ever been before him, and Sylvain is _ scared_. Unless she asks him to, he won’t try, and even if he does, he’s not sure he could.

For now, however, holding her confused, curious, aroused gaze while he kisses down her stomach just below her bellybutton is enough. His fingers and mouth hover above the trim of her underwear. “I want something sweet. Let me have a little taste,” he whispers against her hidden skin. Mercedes’s breath comes loud, hard, and heavy as he slowly peels back the lace and slides it off her legs.

Sylvain wants to eat her alive. He wants to spend all night and all morning between her thighs, either with his face or his hips or—he wants—he wants—

“You’re so wet already,” he marvels, dipping a finger into her arousal just outside her center. She shivers and squeezes her eyes shut while he gently, oh-so-gently strokes her how she likes, not touching anything more sensitive than this. 

“You know you don’t need to tease,” Mercedes tries to chastise him, but she’s not even _ facing _him even with her eyes closed and it lessens the effect.

“I’m not. I’m really, really, _ really _glad. Mind if I make you wetter?”

“You’re doing a fine job already.” He can barely hear the words, like she’s uncertain if she wanted him to hear. She shifts awkwardly on the bed, and one of his hands clamps down on her thigh.

“Mercedes.” Sylvain waits and forces himself to be patient and not respond to her questioning hums, to wait for her to open her eyes. Cautiously, slowly, _ so _slowly he thinks it might be causing him pain, he lowers his face against the wettest part of her, eyes trained on her face the whole while, and—he can’t slow down—lashes his tongue against her clit.

Mercedes’s cry is ragged, pure, and _ loud _and Sylvain doesn’t think there are many prettier sounds in the world. Her hips twitch when he laughs against her. “Mm, Mercedes, we’re gonna have to change the menu at teatime. I don’t think any other sweets can compare.”

Even her thighs are blushing. _ She is going to kill him_.

“I didn’t know,” she gasps above him. “I...I didn’t...I knew, but I didn’t—”

Sylvain has no idea what she’s saying right now, but he forces himself to find out. “What’s up? This okay?”

“Oh, you have no idea.”

He has a little bit of an idea, but he keeps his mouth shut. For now.

“I’ve thought about this...a while. But I didn’t expect...tonight.” Mercedes cards his hair between her fingers a little too gently, and Sylvain nips at the inside of her thigh. She bites her lip, and there are so many parts of her Sylvain wants to taste that he feels a little overwhelmed. The next words she blurts out take him by surprise. “I’m so glad you didn’t shave today.”

_ What_?

He’d forgotten. It was too short to take a straight-edge to, and Mercedes had never minded kissing him like this like some other girls had, so he’d given it no thought til now.

The recent memory of the nobleman’s home in Itha, with his scruff on her neck and her subsequent complaint, blinks into his mind. “Oh.” His grin grows into something wolfish. “_Oh_.” Without waiting for further input, Sylvain hooks his arms under her knees, yanks her off the edge of the bed, and buries his face between her legs again.

Mercedes screams so loudly he hopes she wakes up the entire guest wing. Sylvain sucks the hood of her clit and flicks his tongue against it as it escapes his lips. “Let me know if something feels good,” he tells her, “or if it’s too much.” She’s already glittering with sweat and her lips gasp for air, but she manages to give him a shaky nod. Sylvain quirks a self-satisfied brow, says, “I wonder how long you can last until it is,” and slips a finger inside her before chasing it with his tongue again.

Mercedes is _ tight_. She’s always tight, and it always takes time to work her open enough for a second finger, but she’s coming apart under his mouth and tongue and finger fast enough that Sylvain’s sure she’d be ready for a—his cock in mere minutes. He loosens his pants to relieve that painful pressure on his erection and catches her eye. “It’s okay,” he breathes against her, and she nods and shudders before falling back to the mattress again. He can feel her _ trying _not to pull his hair, but her alternative distraction seems to be to stop riding his face at all, and it’s only seconds again before she’s seeking that rhythm again.

He’s reading her body like a divinely sensual book, and he wants to tell her he’s ready to start a new religion. But something tells him Mercedes won’t appreciate _ that _kind of blasphemy—

“Sweet Sothis, preserve me,” she whispers to herself, voice hoarse enough that Sylvain almost hadn’t caught the words.

_ Almost_.

Sylvain pulls his mouth away but pushes a second finger inside her. He curls the two upwards, searching for that rough, delicate part that—yes, she’s arching off the bed with a sob. Her eyelids have flown open to stare because he’d stopped, and _ Goddess_, isn’t that right where he wants her gaze.

“What was that?” Sylvain murmurs, pressing a long, slow stroke at that same spot. Her breath hitches and her hips follow like they can’t help it. They can’t. He knows this. “Did you just take the Goddess’s true name in vain, sweetheart?” He emphasizes his point with a rougher thrust and a softer, tight circle to her clit. Mercedes is helpless to reply to his cruel teasing save for covering her face, her mouth, her moans. “No, no, I don’t think so.” Sylvain pushes her hands aside and smooths his thumb over her cheekbone, and when she doesn’t try to cover her pink face, shining-wet lips, pupils blown huge and black again, he strokes down to her lace bustier to flick a nipple still covered by rough lace. “You can’t hide from the Goddess; you can’t hide from me, either.”

Were Mercedes not on the verge of coming—he can feel, because he _ knows, _he finally knows what these signs are—she probably would make a face and punish him for that. But as it is, she just cries out, and he plunges his tongue in her mouth, and his fingers pick up the pace. Everything he does seems to make her scream. He’s going to get such hell from his friends in the morning, and Mercedes is going to be _ so _embarrassed, but the thought just gets him to smile at her sharper, laugh at her glassy-eyed expression and struggle to form words.

But she’s not so far gone that she forgets where she is. Who she is. Who _ he _is. Sylvain breaks off from one kiss and prepares to slide down her body to plunge his tongue inside her again elsewhere when she catches his cheek, tries to whisper, “I love—” but finishes the sentence on a long, broken wail.

Well.

Sylvain _ has _to watch now.

His fingers keep moving, much as he’d love to keep tasting her, and he twirls strands of her hair in his fingers, stroking and talking her through it. “Are you gonna come for me, honey? Are you gonna give me my best birthday present yet?” Mercedes nods, clearly unaware she’s doing so, and like it’s the last thing she has to do in life. 

Not even that long ago, she’d grimace at these words, the cooing and the joking metaphors. But she’s pliant in his hands, fingers, mouth, and Sylvain is willing to bet she’ll be ready to scream at anything he says as long as he doesn’t stop. She seems to have come to that realization, too, because her eyes flutter shut again and she tries to turn her head face-first to the pillow, but Sylvain cups her jaw and turns her back to him. 

“No, no, look at me. I want to see you. For real.” 

She does. With visible effort. Sylvain wonders what it must be like to have someone like him, or even just..._ him_ hunched over her, pants half-done, pawing at her breasts, fingers inside her up to the second knuckle, telling her to look in his eyes and come.

The thought doesn’t fill him with revulsion.

In fact, the idea of her looking at him this way and still panting little _ ah-ah-ah_s...makes him harder.

And as for him, will Sylvain _ ever _tire of this sight? Will her heaving breasts and embarrassed, aroused blush and gasping lips and beautiful, delicate face ever stop filling him with equal parts affection and brutal, manly delight?

“Come on, sweetheart.” He picks up the pace, presses against her clit in those two tight circles. “Come for me. Come on, come on, come on, come on—”

Mercedes, for the first time, does not come crying his name.

“I _ love _you! Oh, Go—I love, I, I love—”

And nothing that evening before, during, or even his own relief after is nearly as satisfying a 'present' nor made him love her so hard.


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

Oh, he is just _smug_.

Annette and Ashe both chat up a storm whenever silences get to last too long, even the comfortable ones. Their faces turn the exact same shade of pink when this happens. Annette, at least, gets bouncier and her voice gets higher-pitched and squeal-ier and faster. Ashe, however, just starts stammering as his sentences speed up.

Felix’s jaw has been set so tightly all day that Sylvain’s waiting for him to scream just to get some relief from the tension. He _doesn’t _scream, but he also won’t meet Sylvain’s taunting gaze, and keeps snapping at Mercedes whenever she does something kind like hand him a dropped training handwrap or point out a cute cat or merely exist within his general proximity.

Sylvain’s parents make themselves scarce, so their calculating gazes are easy to avoid.

People Sylvain doesn’t even _know _stare at their feet, adjust their trousers and skirts when Mercedes speaks or hear his name introduced to someone else.

Honestly, last night was nothing.

_Today _is the best birthday present Sylvain’s ever received: pure, unbridled, jealous, embarrassed, aroused _awe_.

“You’re so _gross_,” Hilda complains, plopping down on the bench across from him. Sylvain quirks a brow at her from where he’s poring over a map of Sreng. “Goddess, you could stand to look a little less pleased with yourself for waking everyone up.”

Sylvain leers at her. “Hey, it wasn’t _me _being pleased with _myself_—”

“Yeah, okay, thanks, spare me.”

He shakes the map out like he needs to observe it more closely, crosses his legs, and returns to pretending his eyes aren’t glazing over it now. “And you said you didn’t want me for a husband.”

“The thing that’s so awful about you is _she’s_ not even embarrassed.”

He smirks. He can’t help it. And why should he? Mercedes is _not _embarrassed, or at least not anymore, and it’s made watching her interactions with others today an absolute delight. She smiles and nods and offers counsel and doles out perfumed handkerchiefs and pours tea, all the while her pretty blue eyes boring holes into someone else’s mortified visage, _waiting _for them to say something about her enraptured cries of his name last night.

It had been a pleasant surprise, to be sure, but when she’d told him, “I don’t see any reason at all why I should be ashamed of loving you and what you make me feel,” Sylvain had gathered all his strength so he could avoid pushing them both into an unoccupied room, getting on his knees, and flipping up her skirts again.

His strength had failed him. They were late to afternoon church services.

The only thing Mercedes seems remorseful about is waking people so late at night, and she said they really should try to be quiet in the future for politeness’s sake. Sylvain is pretty sure he can take that as a challenge.

“Ah, c’mon, Hil,” a new voice joins them. Caspar swings himself onto the bench next to her, throws his arm around her shoulders, and offers Sylvain a lazy grin. “Someone as nice and proper as Mercedes? Probably just being sweet to him on his birthday.”

“Not so sure about proper,” Sylvain grins back. And then, because he suddenly has a stupid urge for a pissing contest, he brings two fingers to his mouth, splits them, and curls his tongue between the gap. “But yeah, she’s nice and _sweet_.”

“Aagh!” Hilda screeches, slapping her hands over her face. Sylvain cackles. “You’re so gross!”

“Hilda doesn’t even let me kiss her after,” Caspar informs Sylvain, like he’d _asked_, and also like Hilda isn’t sitting next to him, _in front of Sylvain_.

He now understands why Hilda is objecting to him talking about his own sexual exploits.

“That’s ‘cause it’s _gross_.”

“I don’t hear you complaining when I’m _doing _it—”

“Well, you don’t hear me screaming like that, either—”

Sylvain chokes on his laugh, and Caspar pouts. Hilda jabs her finger in his broad chest, and Caspar rubs the spot like it had actually hurt. 

Hilda’s strong, though. Maybe it had.

“I have no clue what _Sylvain _of all people is doing right, but maybe you should ask him—”

“Yo, I’m right here, guys.”

“—since he’s doing a great enough job considering he hasn’t even _fucked _his wife yet!”

Caspar’s mouth drops open, Hilda gasps and zips her lips, and Sylvain loses all ability to make noise at all.

“_What_?”

Caspar twists to gape so fast Sylvain’s sure he’s wrenched his neck. “Inside voice, Caspar,” Sylvain says thinly, rather than spitting _Hilda-what-the-fuck_ like he wants.

“_You haven’t fucked your wife_?”

Caspar’s ‘inside voice’ isn’t much quieter, just raspier. How can a whisper sound so loud?

Sylvain gives in. “Hilda, what the _fuck_?” 

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I was teasing and it just slipped out!”

“Buddy, I am _so_ sorry,” Caspar says, and he does sound sorry, like he’s just learned Sylvain’s favorite horse just eloped with Claude’s wyvern or some other true, unexpected betrayal. Sylvain waves his weird concerns away.

“It’s...it’s fine. It’s intentional. We’re...going slowly.”

“Uh-huh.”

“_Really_.”

“Yeah.”

Sylvain buries his face in his hands. Age twenty-six is off to an interesting start. “Hilda, I take back what I said. About you knowing just what to say to make a guy feel good.”

Fabric rustles atop a creaking bench, and he tenses, but Hilda’s voice keeps the same distance when she tells Caspar in the same kind of loud not-whisper, “I think Sylvain’s afraid to have sex with her.”

Okay, that’s enough.

“I’m gonna see both of you around,” Sylvain says, leaping off the bench with the map in danger of tearing in his hands. “I gotta do...stuff. Away. Somewhere that’s not here.”

And he does. He has to do _literally _anything away, somewhere not here.

It’s not fair that _he’s _the one embarrassed.

* * *

The two of them are good, as promised, and it takes only a couple more nights for Sylvain and Mercedes to stop being on the receiving end of embarrassed flushes and eyerolls. She’s running off with Annette at every chance she can get, which is both hilarious and adorable. Felix has developed a whole new arsenal of death glares tailored just for his childhood best friend, but he’s the only one who’s still showing any sort of reaction. This is admittedly because Sylvain keeps teasing him, too, since any time Mercedes tries _anything _new when they’re alone, no matter how subtle, he has a pretty good idea who gave her the advice.

Teasing Felix is better than being teased by Hilda and Caspar or, Goddess forbid, _Linhardt_. Every time he runs into any of them in the corridors or streets, Sylvain breaks out into a cold sweat like one of them’s going to start shouting his secret to the Kingdom.

Ashe has sobered up nicely, though. He barely blushes when Sylvain cracks a joke about losing maidenheads on horseback, and that’s telling. The reins of his horse jingle merrily in the dawn chill. “But how can I watch the other jouster’s rhythm if _I’m _getting my own going, too? It’s an awful lot to focus on, if I have to watch their lance, _and _do this—” he trots briefly around the ring. His form’s good, but his heels are too high.

Sylvain shrugs. “You’re overthinking it. Come on, Ashe. The horse should be the least of your concerns. The giant armored rider with a huge lance at your face takes priority.” He’s on his black horse, his favorite and fastest, and when he weaves around the ring to walk side by side with his other horse Ashe is borrowing, the two animals nuzzle each other. Sylvain cards his fingers through the mane as he talks. “Don’t think about how high out of your saddle you are, just if your side’ll be protected. Watch the other jouster’s movements, not your boots—although, actually, keep your heels down a little.”

“This is harder than I expected,” Ashe sighs, twirling his training lance sadly and absently. “And here I thought I was a pretty good horseman before this morning.”

He shrugs again. “You are. But you’re thinking like a soldier, not a jouster.”

“I am a soldier, though.” Something flat and sad begins to color the edges of Ashe’s voice, and Sylvain races to knock it away.

“So’s everyone else competing. Which is why we’re all here in Fhirdiad celebrating, right? And knocking each other off horses. And hey,” Sylvain elbows Ashe before trotting a little more ahead. “All you have to do is win enough to go against _me_, and you’ll be celebrating so hard you can’t walk in the morning.”

Ashe’s face turns red as the sunrise. “W-what does _that _have to do with anything?”

“Because you’ll win, and you can scoop up some pretty young thing to swoon over after so you can prove you’re a big, tough soldier with a sexy sword and not a...pastry chef with a tiny knife.” Sylvain shakes his head. “At least lose the apron in the joust, Ashe. You’re killin’ me.”

Ashe just stares unblinkingly at him, not even trying to gain control over his borrowed horse. The horse plods along, weaving about the ring, chewing at untrimmed grass. “You’re not seriously considering throwing the joust for me, are you, Sylvain?”

“‘Considering?’ Hell no. I’m _doing_.”

That seems to snap Ashe to attention. “Sylvain, don’t you dare.”

“Huh?”

Ashe grips the reins and urges his horse ahead, taking his place at the list. “That’s the least chivalrous offer you’ve ever made me. Don’t pretend to _lose _to me just so _I’ll_...I’ll…”

“Get laid?”

“Syl_vain_!” Ashe’s voice cracks, and he looks more insulted than anything. His grip on both lance and training shield tightens, his eyes glow, and—

_Oh_. 

Sylvain and his horse make their leisurely way to the other end of the list. He spreads his arms wide in an exaggerated, insouciant shrug. “I mean, unless you think you can _actually _win against me…”

Ashe is a good kid. Sylvain should have known better than to think he’d be willing to do something even _remotely _dishonest.

Sylvain grins as Ashe readies his lance and glares with true, knightly, competitive spirit. “You got a firm grip on your _weapon_, pal? There’s a reason I usually win these things, y’know. I ride long and hard.”

Ashe snorts. His—Sylvain’s!—horse paws the dust and seems to glare at him, too. _Traitors, the both of them_, he can’t help but think with glee. “You’re all talk and no action.” For one stupidly panicked moment, Hilda’s face flashes through Sylvain’s mind, but he calms himself down when Ashe raises the lance and shouts, “On my mark!”

* * *

“I feel like you gave him more bruises than he deserved,” Hilda observes, and Sylvain shrugs. He’d dragged the battered Ashe to the private courtyard where he knew their friends would be eating lunch, and all he’d had to do was greet everyone with a loud and cheery “The heroes return!” for all attention to shine on them. Mercedes had rushed over with her fingertips flickering with white healing magic before Ashe could complain about being fussed over. They’re out of earshot in the corner of the courtyard now, where Ashe is regaling Caspar, Mercedes, and Annette with his heroic exploits and how Sylvain had, well, _exploited _every single one of them.

“He said he wants to win on his own terms. What, am I supposed to dumb it down for him?”

“Are you trying to live through him vicariously or something?”

He takes a deep, calming breath and prays to the Goddess for patience. “You know, just because it ‘slipped out’ once doesn’t mean it’s okay to talk about like, all the time.”

“I mean, it’s just been a while since Felix and Annette got married, and like…” Hilda plays with her hair. “You didn’t really tell me _why_.”

“I don’t need to.” He doesn’t look at her. “I said we’ve got some stuff to work through, and—no, I’m not _afraid_.”

“I didn’t say you were.” Sylvain stares at her, and she stares back. “What?”

“You did, though. You told Caspar just the other day—”

“What’d she tell me?” Caspar flops onto his stomach, playing with grass right away like he’s a toddler. 

“Welcome to the conversation, Caspar.”

“Sylvain thinks I told you that I said I think he’s afraid of having sex with Mercedes.”

“Oh.” Caspar blinks. “You did. Why’re you afraid, man?”

Sylvain glares at Hilda, who now looks uncharacteristically meek. “Well, if I were, which, you know, I am _not_…” He sighs, but it comes out more as a quick huff of air. “It’s me. It’s because of me. It’s not that I don’t _want _to. I do. I really, really do. But I just...can’t.”

The unlikely couple in front of him fixes him with matching piercing looks so full of meaning that it makes him even more uncomfortable.

“Does your thing like, not work anym—” Fortunately, Hilda socks Caspar in the gut so Sylvain doesn’t have to. His excuses rush out on a wheeze. “Sorry, I’m sorry! I just mean like, you guys are married, so it’s not like you have to _worry _about ‘everything but the hole,’ right?”

“Wow, Hilda. You sure nabbed a charmer.” Sylvain’s hands have broken into a cold sweat. His eyes keep trailing to where Mercedes, Annette, and Ashe are all gabbing, equal parts terrified and hopeful they’ll wander on over.

“Didn’t I? What do you mean, handsome?”

“Well,” Caspar says as carefully as Sylvain thinks he knows how, “me and you, we’d be slowed down by a baby, right? We’re always on the move.” Sylvain, who had twitched at the word _baby_, now twitches again at the thought of Hilda constantly needing to run around the world in the name of ‘adventure’ because of a little someone labeled ‘enemy of the Kingdom.’ He’s glad Caspar’s hearing had happened so speedily, calmly, and _subtly_. 

“_Oh_.” This apparently means something to Hilda that it does not to Sylvain.

Caspar leans back on the palms of his hands and rips up more grass. Good thing Dedue isn’t here. “Yeah, we’re having sex, duh. And it’s _awesome_. But we’re not, uh, we’re not married yet, but we still wanna have sex, so…”

Caspar’s eloquency is failing him as he turns red, then redder when Hilda asks, “Married _yet_?”

Oh, Goddess. Sylvain wants to be anywhere but here right now. “Well,” he starts to say as a form of farewell, half to his feet. Caspar holds out a hand.

“Now stop right there, Gautier.”

Gautier stops right there.

“Sit down. I’m not done, yeah?”

He sits down.

“Thanks.” Caspar exhales so noisily it’s a wonder Mercedes doesn’t perk up, scurry over, and ask if he’s in need of tea to clear his throat. “Listen, I don’t really...get what’s going on, but if it’s like, some weird noble baby complex you’ve got, why don’t you just use protection?”

Sylvain squints, but even Hilda doesn’t look confused. Well, she _does _look confused, but it seems to be directed at _him_, not her lover.

“Yeah, I was kinda wondering that, now that you mention it,” she muses.

“Back in school, Manuela told me that shit _does _stop your dick from working,” Sylvain tells Caspar, pretending Hilda is far, far away. 

Caspar snorts. “Nah, man! Just the fake herbal crap the merchants at the monastery sold! No, you have to go into town for _real _stuff. Pulling out’s not the only way, you know.”

“This sounds fake.”

“It’s not _fake_!” Caspar sounds annoyed, like Sylvain had been talking about the size of Hilda’s breasts, but he takes a deep breath and repeats, “It’s not fake. Look, I know the Kingdom is...weird about nobles and babies and shit, and it’s not like your Blue Lion pals were raging as hard as you, so I get why you didn’t know about this crap in the past. But c’mon, man!” Caspar’s voice is rising in excitement, and Sylvain’s nervous sweat is picking up. “It’s 1186! Get out there and _get some_!”

This is, without a doubt, the strangest conversation Sylvain has ever had with someone from the Empire, and this includes every evil monologue he’d heard from Hubert. Even worse, the Chivalry Trio over in the corner seems to be finishing their own chat, and Mercedes is giving him come-hither eyes. Sylvain hopes she remains thither until he extracts this suddenly-very-fascinating information from Caspar.

“Caspar,” he says, leaning close and ignoring Hilda again, “if you’re lying, or—or holding out on me as some twisted revenge scheme—”

“I’m not. I swear on my father’s grave. My uncle’s, too.” Caspar’s face is as serious as Sylvain thinks he’s ever seen, loose grass clutched tightly in his fist like a holy object. “You can get your rocks off without pulling out, seriously.”

Hilda makes gagging noises behind them while Sylvain nods solemnly. “Where the hell in pure-and-holy Fhirdiad am I supposed to look?”

“Do you trust me?” Caspar growls.

His heart’s racing so fast it makes his hand tremble when he thrusts it out for Caspar to shake. “I trust you.”

Caspar’s hand practically breaks every one of his fingers with its promise. His face lights up. “Great! Let’s go shopping!”

* * *

When Caspar brings him to a regular alchemist’s shop, Sylvain is certain he has trusted the wrong man. Caspar catches the glare beginning to form on his eyebrows in time, however, flashes him a toothy smile, says “Trust me, right?” and zooms past all the shelves like the bottles have personally offended him.

Sylvain follows at a more moderate pace. Every shopper in the store suddenly grows a million eyes, and they’re all staring directly at the heir of House Gautier. If this place _does _have some sort of nefarious sex totem section, then every single person here must see him and Caspar heading for it. 

Oh, Goddess. What if they tell his parents?

Sylvain shakes the adolescent thought aside. It’s a fear that hasn’t tormented in a long time. A decade at least.

_He’s old. He’s twenty-six. He’s _old. ‘_Decade_’ _is a word that now can come in _plurals _and still refer to him as a cognizant human being_.

“C’mere, Gautier.” Sylvain would punch Caspar’s loud mouth off him if he weren’t entirely aware Caspar would punch him back and be much more efficient in permanently shutting him up.

“Stop using my name,” he hisses, finding Caspar propping open a door. Caspar rolls his eyes.

“Sheesh. You Kingdom nobles really are all prudes deep down, huh? C’mon.” He ducks inside the archway into a darker space, and Sylvain follows.

“First time anyone’s called me _that_.”

“And,” Caspar says triumphantly, “first time you’ve been in a place like _this_, huh?”

He has his arms stretched wide open in a new shop, largely free of clientele save the two of them, like Sylvain needs to be welcomed, and—

Sylvain is suitably unimpressed.

“You really think I haven’t been in a sex shop, huh, Bergliez?”

The disappointment on Caspar’s face is so soul-stirring Sylvain almost feels a little guilty. But he brightens again so quickly that Sylvain’s emotional response doesn’t have time to catch up. The start of an apology is still on the tip of his tongue when Caspar says, “But you haven’t been to _this _sex shop! I could tell by the look on your face when we came here!”

“True.”

Caspar grabs his arm and starts dragging him past colorful bottles, anatomically creative phalli, and a variety of engraved manacles that kind of look like they’re made of mithril. He stops in front of the counter, where a hunched merchant sits. The person’s face is covered by one of the beaked hoods many Imperial dark mages wore to shroud themselves, and some complicated emotion curls in Sylvain’s gut when he sees more of the robes and hoods hung neatly for sale mixed with other costumes. He hopes they’re new, not...repurposed.

Some people are probably into that, though, he recognizes with a sigh.

Caspar’s chatting up the fake-dark-mage, who’s answering in grunts and rifling through boxes behind the counters. Sylvain turns his attention back to the products. He crinkles his nose. “Are you selling me socks?”

He can’t see the merchant frown, but he sure can feel it.

“They’re socks for your dick!” Caspar cheers, and Sylvain senses the merchant’s frown deepen. “Look, there’re a bunch of kinds. There’s linen, and leather, and—holy fuck! Is that wyvern scale leather?” 

“Ethically sourced and sustainably produced,” the merchant affirms. Caspar whips out a coinpurse and is counting gold before Sylvain can properly convey just how...how…

_Awesome this is_.

“Do you just like, what, you put it on and...finish in this?” he asks lamely. The merchant tilts his head quizzically. 

“This your first time, kid?”

“No!” Sylvain squawks, and one of the shop’s few patrons furtively glances his direction. “No,” he says more quietly, “but I’m just not...used to this stuff being sold so, you know, openly.” He can’t believe he of all people is getting flustered about the topic. The charm turns on, protecting him. “I think I would have had a way happier and more misspent youth if I’d known where to get things like this.”

“Ha! _Spent_! Nice one.”

“Thanks, Caspar.”

The merchant seems unimpressed. “Congratulations. Are you buying?”

Caspar’s wandered over to juggle strange glowing stones. He will not be of any further help. Sylvain eyes the box of assorted...dick socks or whatever they’re actually called and gingerly picks one up. It dangles in front of him like a dangerous viper.

“So, what, is it one-size-fits-all, or…?”

“You try it, you buy it.”

Sylvain spends too much of the Gautier fortune on dick socks that afternoon and spends the rest of the walk back quietly asking Caspar how the damned things actually _work_.

* * *

Now that most of the major families of the continent have arrived, the festivities begin in earnest.

There are plenty of fun activities for an aimless couple to partake in. There’s a beautiful little service complete with a large chorus of children from Garreg Mach, selected from among the many war orphans in its already-enormous monastery chorus for their pristine voices. Mercedes is moved to tears before the morning service is even halfway concluded.

There are countless merchant stalls and stands crowding the streets of Fhirdiad. Sylvain sees one selling something new outside whenever he strolls to any window in the palace. He starts to wonder if the shop he and Caspar went to will have anything out in the open air, but quickly dismisses the idea as preposterous. Maybe he’ll take Mercedes there, a foolish thought pops into his head shortly after. Or maybe he’ll politely ask Annette to blast his face off with a healthy dose of Bolganone, a more reasonable second thought supplies.

There are other ‘festivities’ they both avoid without mentioning it, such as the dramatic public reading of some up-and-coming poet’s epic detailing the Battle at Gronder. There are others that they’re required to attend, as prominent nobles. But aside from the public speeches, these are mostly pleasant enough, like the outdoor springtime dance. It’s nowhere on the same scale as the grand ball that will occur when the moon is about to wane, but the Fhirdiad cellars uncork their best sweet wine and hire a beautiful musical troupe complete with curvaceous dancers and singers with voices like honey.

Sylvain can’t help but _look_, and he doesn’t think it fair for Felix to snarl at him about it. “It makes comparing them to my _wife_ all the better,” he insists, and when Felix doesn’t believe him and looks like he’s going to draw steel, even _now_, on the palace grounds, surrounded by royal guards, Sylvain sighs and does what any gentleman would do.

He grabs his wife, the love of his existence and fire of his bed, and swoops her down into a long, highly inappropriate kiss, one hand gently cupping her head with a stray nail scratching _that _spot on her neck, the other hand gently cupping her rear.

When he comes up for air, Mercedes is still clinging to his neck for dear life. One of the curvaceous dancers giggles nearby, but Felix’s usually-pale face is practically purple, and Ingrid has materialized out of nowhere looking _livid_.

“Look, Ingrid!” Sylvain foolishly quips, squeezing Mercedes tight enough to make her squeak. “Not a scarecrow this time!”

He doesn’t really get why Mercedes lets Ingrid slap him three ways to hell, but Ingrid _hadn’t _given him a lecture on public indecency. So maybe it was the better trade-off.

His delinquent friends—those being Caspar von Bergliez and Hilda Valentine Goneril—haven’t shown themselves during the last few parties, official pardon aside. Sylvain isn’t thrilled that their presence has been compensated for by the Archbishop attending each and every event, but the man seems happy enough to be cool and distant for the time being.

Maybe, someday, Sylvain would like to talk it over, that ‘sparring session’ that had gone so wrong. That had _started _so wrong. But that day’s nowhere near today.

So Sylvain stays close to his friends and dances with them all and is hit by most of them for one reason or another, and the most shameful part isn’t the way he’s secluded himself from Kingdom, Church, and House, but the way he hasn’t quite found a moment alone to try out how long he can last with one of those stupid leather socks on his dick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic's winding down (and, uh, cranking it up a bit, I guess), but you guys should come talk to me on twitter (I'm [@NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites)) about the stuff you are liking! nature is truly incredible...thank u for ur lov & support & lust...For Plot! Yes! Lust For Plot!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> which one of you clowns was Hit #6969 and didn't screenshot it for me? i know ur out there, Own Up To Your Tomfoolery

* * *

Out of the entire box of his purchases, the linen one looks the most innocuous.

The bedroom door’s locked, Mercedes is taking tea with Ingrid in the royal quarters, his parents are busy both with ignoring sycophants and being sycophants, and none of his friends have a key or reason to bother him. It’s as good and safe a time as any for Sylvain to jack off, but slicking himself up to hardness and rolling on the thing makes him feel like a pre-teen furtively grinding against the seat of a pew during church services.

All pre-teens have done that, right?

The linen sock-thing whose actual name he’s forgotten doesn’t look particularly...sexy on him. It’s comfortable enough, but he wonders how the soft leather ones closer to his skin tone might feel differently. Sylvain gives his clothed dick a tentative stroke, and the mostly-regular jolt of pleasure shivering through him takes him aback.

“Okay,” he mutters, thumbing the tip again. “Okay. Might be fine.”

Sylvain inhales deeply, shuts his eyes, leans against the pillows, tightens his grip, and lets his hand and mind take over.

Maybe he should be embarrassed by how quickly he grows accustomed to the softly-textured feel of the expensive fabric on his most sensitive parts, how quickly his hips start snapping to his usual comfortable rhythm. But one blessing Sylvain’s been left with is his utter lack of shame when it comes to enjoying company with his own hand.

What he _is _ashamed by is the fantasy he chooses, an old one from his stockpile he’d been unpleasantly surprised by how often he’d revisited in the Dukedom years. One from school, from a rotating list of nighttime imaginings with different girls at the Academy when he didn’t want to or couldn’t find someone to share his bed.

The one about Mercedes, when she was less a person to him and more just a _girl_.

_“Mm, you’re looking divine as always.” Mercedes startles at the sound of his voice and shrinks into herself. It’s odd; she’s not one to ignore a greeting or meet someone face-to-face. Sylvain looks behind him at the crowded cathedral floor; no one’s come close to the small, forgotten room with the statues of the four Saints. “You’re not lonely all trapped in here?”_

_‘Trapped’ is a good word for it. He hears her quick intake of breath and she shuffles deeper into the corner, by the statue of Saint Cethleann. Sylvain follows. He’s tall and broad-shouldered enough that his back blocks the light filtering in from the cathedral and the room darkens._

_“I…”_

_Closer. “Yeah? You?”_

_“I can be so scattered sometimes.” He’s right behind her, and there’s no other corner for her to flee to. “I forgot to...put on my...my…’_

_Sylvain grins. “Your…?”_

_The back of Mercedes’s neck is bright pink. She’s shaking her head over and over, making her long plait swing, unable to voice whatever it is she’s forgotten, and Sylvain decides to find out himself. Quicker than she can react beyond a squeak, he wraps his arm around her chest and shoves his hand under her short school skirt._

_“Oh, _I _see, Mercedes. How absolutely tragic.”_

Sylvain moans and slows down. The linen’s already going to make him last longer, he can tell, but the combination of the oil on his cock and the tight cloth encasing him is too good, too reminiscent of something he’s been deprived of for so long—

Goddess, his legs are sweating already.

_“S-Sylvain!” Her high-pitched voice is even higher, and his hand delves deeper, until_—

_“Yeah, baby? Need help with something?” Mercedes whimpers, and when two of his fingers dip shallowly into her already-slick center, she chokes on a gasp. “Oh, yeah, sure feels like you do.”_

_Sylvain gives her half a second to breathe before he plunges them inside just below the second knuckle._

_“Feels good…”_

_“Yeah, I bet.”_

He throws his head back and digs his heel into the mattress. Each breath comes out with a hoarse rattle. Dimly aware the cloth still holds nice and tight around his base but rides easy and slick with each roll of skin, Sylvain squeezes the head and feels delicious chills race down his spine with the unfamiliar new texture.

_In that fast, irrational fashion fantasies move when they want to hurry up, Sylvain’s got Mercedes seated just in front of Saint Cethleann’s foot, her legs clamped tight around him as he lines up. One breast is completely bared to him from her unbuttoned blouse and his hand has slipped inside to grope the other, to slide his fingers across_—

_“Ready, babe?” He inches inside, just a bit._

Sylvain curses and jerks his hips hard into his hand. He freezes, collects himself, cups his other hand under his balls, and falls back into the rhythm.

—_slides his thumbs across her nipples. She kisses him, long and slow. His fingers curl into her hair, playing with the short ends._

_He’s inside, Sylvain’s inside, he’s fucking her, wet and hot and tight and he’s finally _fucking_ her_—

“Shit, Goddess, sh—” His hand speeds up faster than he thought the cloth could allow, faster than he thought would still feel good—

_Mercedes is moaning, kissing his skin anywhere she can reach. “Love you, I love you,” she whispers between kisses, between moans. Sylvain’s inside, slow, pulsing, making love to her body, lips, drawing out her voice and vowels_—

“Merce—” He can’t be embarrassed crying her name when she’s not even here; she_ feels_ here, she _could_ be here, she could walk right in and he wouldn’t care—no, he’d be delighted—

_Three freckles on her right breast. Why hasn’t he tasted them yet? Like lavender, he bets, she’s moaning his name, she’s whispering she loves him but she can hardly speak, wet, tight, fabric, oil_—

He’s going to come—

_Freckles, firelight, “I’m so glad you didn’t shave,” lavender laughter in the morning_.

He’s going to come—

_Skin shining with bathwater, her breasts heave as she gasps, “Look at me when you come.”_

He’s going to come—

_Skin breasts freckles blue eyes and a bright teasing smile_

“Fuck!” The cloth’s practically burning as he spills into—

_Miklan punches him in the face, and Sylvain flies into the bannister while the sobbing girl races down the stairs beside him. “It’s because of stupid spoiled _sluts _like you that the rest of us can’t find a willing hole to fuck!”_

_He doesn’t dare wipe the blood dripping from his teeth through his lips. Miklan’s too close, the long winding stairs to the family quarters even closer, and his brother could easily take it as a dismissive insult or something else worthy of a fatal kick._

_“Come back, baby!” Miklan calls down the stairs, desperation and pain in his voice. Only faint sobbing replies. The pain etched in his features twists into ugly fury. “Yeah, I see! I see what you want! Here, I’ll _give _you what you want, since you won’t risk wanting _me_!”_

_Sylvain is almost sixteen and tall, but Miklan is older and stronger, and he knows by now not to fight back. It doesn’t make his arm shatter any less when Miklan picks him up by the front of his new school uniform and tosses him down the stairs after the girl who wouldn’t fuck him._

“Shit! No, d-damn it—” 

Sylvain’s left shuddering violently, drenched in cooling sweat and nauseated by the unwelcome memory accompanying the height of his climax.

He lies back on the damp pillows trying to catch his breath. The palace has more intricate ceilings than he remembers; he’s used to a sparse, homey style of dark wood and minimally carved borders. Art changes with time, but time doesn’t seem to leave enough behind at the same pace.

Once his heartbeat softens to a manageable drumbeat in his ears, Sylvain sighs and sits up. His cock’s gone soft unsurprisingly fast, but even through the horror and queasiness curling in his gut, he’s pleased to see the linen hasn’t let even a drop of semen escape—at least, not until he fumbles while slipping it off, and part of it slops onto the sheets.

Still. It’s at least a relief to know he _can _have sex with Mercedes before he’s ready to even approach the _concept_ of Crest babies—

Sylvain freezes again, hand stupidly aloft with a dripping used dick sock. If possible, his blood turns icier.

_“It’s because of stupid spoiled _sluts _like you that the rest of us can’t find a willing hole to fuck!” _

“Shit! Oh, fuck!”

* * *

“Caspar!” Sylvain rushes past a confused Hilda the moment she answers his frantic knocking and shouts his way to the sitting room. “Caspar, I just remembered! The fucking...the fucking dick socks are _outlawed _in Gautier lands! The fuck am I supposed to do? All contraceptives and shit—the_ entire time _House Gautier’s ruled that territory, sale and imports’ve been _illegal_—”

Two wide-eyed stares holding teacups greet him once he bursts through the archway. What must be Hilda’s teacup lies abandoned on the table next to a plate of peach buns baked to Mercedes-level perfection.

“Oh, hey, Sylvain,” Caspar greets him with an uncomfortable laugh. “Mercedes and I were wondering where you’d gotten to.”

Mercedes continues to stare. There’s an odd little expression on her face. It’s not a _bad _expression. But it is odd.

“‘Dick socks?’” she repeats politely. Sylvain ducks his head in a stupid little formal bow.

“So. Caspar. I’ll be, uh...somewhere. Later. Actually, uh, don’t worry about it,” his speech speeds up as Caspar’s embarrassed flush spreads to his ears. “Don’t talk to me. Bye.” 

Sylvain spins around and charges out of the room, confused emotions spinning in his head. Hilda manages to land a gentle hand on his arm mid-flight. The sincerity in her face when she says, “That really sucks, honey,” hurts so much that Sylvain almost breaks down and laughs.

* * *

If Mercedes wants to know about the ‘dick socks,’ she doesn’t let on. Sylvain’s unsure if he’s disappointed or relieved.

Not that it matters. The _use _of contraceptives isn’t forbidden, of course, because no one in Gautier territory will get paid enough to monitor every bed in every town. But tax collectors can have a field day seizing babyproof contraband and demanding hefty fines. 

Sylvain had known House Gautier has always been the most rigid in keeping its bloodline alive and well, if not happy. Preventing the birth of any potentially Crest-bearing child became more and more important to his House’s core values as other bordering territories’ bloodlines weakened. It had been difficult enough watching Ingrid’s awkward interactions with her Crest-less brothers grow cooler and cooler over the years.

And Sylvain’s still stuck with the curse of a _minor _Crest, while people like Felix with more magnanimous fathers get born with Major ones.

Sylvain has two choices that he can think of: spend the rest of the budget he’d allotted himself for the trip on a lifetime’s supply of contraceptives, buying out every shop in the capital, thus boosting Fhirdiad’s economy and maybe proving the demand is high enough to merit large-scale social reform…

Or go home and convince his dick that dirty-talking his wife in the bath is pretty much the same thing as thrusting into her vagina until he caves and gives his parents the Crest-grandbabies they demand.

Neither are very appealing and require a lot of bravery Sylvain’s not sure he knows how to muster.

But that’s a problem for another day. The end of the Garland Moon approaches, which means not only is the end of his freedom in Fhirdiad staring him dead in the face, but so are the ball and the joust.

“Will my lady-love grant me a token of her affection? For good luck in the joust?” Sylvain grins wolfishly at Mercedes and is pleased when it teases a blush from her cheeks despite her nerves.

“I suppose she will,” Mercedes says, pretending to be disaffected. The silk of her perfumed handkerchief waves gently in the summer breeze when she holds it out to him, and he bends down to bite it out of her hand. 

“Be careful; it’s fragile!”

Sylvain presses it against his heart. “Apologies, milady. I’ll treat as gently as I will your heart.”

She’s laughing when he leaves to go saddle his horse and finish suiting up. And when the horns announce the start of the joust, Sylvain at the front of the list rears his horse to grab attention, picks her beautiful blue gown out of the crowd under the Crest of Gautier banner, he raises her favor to his lips and blows a dramatic kiss her way. Whether or not she can see the wink doesn't matter. What matters is she’s here to watch him at all.

Sylvain tugs down his visor, the horn blasts again, and by the end of the day, he’s proud to claim the reinforced horseslayer lance as his prize.

And he’s even prouder to help Ashe to his feet after he’d sent him sailing off his horse into the sky, bring him to the infirmary tent, and come face-to-face with the unexpected surprise of seeing Marianne von Edmund already mixing poultices for sore horse hooves.

It does make him wonder if Hilda’s been hiding Claude in a potted plant somewhere, her insistences of “She arrived separately from us! And His Majesty’s overjoyed to have her here!” aside. But he’s proudest of all to leave the blushing, stammering, but well-bruised Ashe in Marianne’s blushing, stammering, but capable hands. 

* * *

“Ah, for all the—they really _are _making out already.”

Mercedes follows his amused gaze instinctively to see a very nicely-dressed Hilda pushing an almost-nicely-dressed Caspar to the wall behind a plant trimmed in the shape of a lion. Their hiding place doesn’t cover enough to make a respectable gentleman think her tongue is anywhere less than halfway down his throat. And Sylvain’s not at all a respectable gentleman.

Mercedes’s head whips back to staring straight ahead. She clears her throat, and Sylvain chuckles. She’s really not one to judge, or even _pretend _judgment.

“Okay, well...let’s go, gorgeous.” He bends his arm for her to take. “We have some scandalizing to do of our own.”

Mercedes offers him an indelicate snort, and she claps her hand over her mouth, belatedly covering the sound. “I—we’re going to _dance_,” she insists over his laughter.

“Oh, I like the sound of that.”

“What else were we going to do at a ball?” Mercedes genuinely doesn’t seem to have picked up on his leer, but he’s enjoying teasing her anyway. Hilda, whose dress has a _significantly _more dramatic drop than he’d expected, had not helped Mercedes purchase a dress this time. No, it’s a special gown for a special occasion, tailored and cut and hemmed and measured so that Mercedes looks practically to have poured herself into it. 

Her breasts are perky and round, their curves emphasized by careful darting but modesty preserved by sweet tufts of lace covering her cleavage. They stop just below her collarbones, brushing against the thin gold necklaces draping elegantly down her neck. Faerghus demands long sleeves even in summer evenings, but the graceful arch of her neck curving a natural path for his hungry gaze from her earrings to the tops of her almost-bare shoulders to the lace, which drags him back to the intricate detail on her breasts...

“Oh, I don’t know,” Sylvain drawls, nodding in the general direction of the lion hedge. “We’ll probably find something else to do.”

Goddess, he loves her in pink. It makes her blushes even more satisfying, if possible.

Somehow, they make it to the dance floor with minimal flirting. They’re fashionably late, as Mercedes’s routine did take time whereas Sylvain’s Gautier cloak over formal courtly attire involved fewer buttons, lacings, and clasps, so it surprises him at first to see no one dancing.

No one, he soon realizes, save the king and queen. Maybe they’re not as late as he thought—his parents won’t be able to complain.

And even that irritating thought drifts from his mind, watching his closest childhood friends dance together. Those proud, stubborn, awkward, children he grew up protecting, both from playdate scrapes and stupid arguments as well as the shadows in his own past...Now they’re protecting a country together, and as delicately and innocently as they’re waltzing together in a properly choreographed routine, Sylvain doubts anyone watching fails to see their love for each other.

The party breaks into polite applause when the music ends with a flourish and the king and queen bow to each other, and the rest of the nobility sweeps onto the floor to join.

Sylvain tucks Mercedes as close to himself as propriety allows and his reputation can excuse. She smells like all their favorite flowers and sugared tea, and the affection overwhelming him once he identifies the bergamot notes threatens to choke him. He settles for squeezing her harder until she complains.

The first dance is more of a courtesy than anything for hungry guests, but even were it not, Sylvain knows Mercedes still would have zipped to the banquet table as soon as permitted. He’s about to join her when a flash of green and gold departing from the thrones’ occupants draws his attention.

Sylvain glances away like he’s been caught slacking off in class, but Mercedes has already made it to the furthest table piled high with savory breads and fruit. She’s not too far to race after, but—

Why is he scared? He’s no coward.

It’s shame.

Sylvain takes a deep, grounding breath and heads for the drinks.

The Archbishop accepts the wineglass Sylvain brings him and matches his toast in silence. No raise of an eyebrow, no snide remark. They remain by the wall, observing the merry chattering crowd together.

Sylvain speaks first. Because he has to, even if the Archbishop was planning on caving first.

“Have _you_ ever died?”

A lively medly bubbles from the direction of the musicians, and a handful of couples take to the floor. Mercedes, still hovering by the banquet table, has found Dedue and Hilda to chat with, which is a strange trio to see. Her smile, even from this distance, glows.

“Once.” The Archbishop’s voice comes out evenly. Like smoothing over the fresh soil of an unmarked grave: impersonal, respectful, final. His next words come out slower, like he’s dragging them from unanalyzed thoughts. “There are...a lot of things you don’t question your ability to do when it comes to staying alive.”

Sylvain knows that sentiment. 

But, as usual, his old Professor gives that knowledge a new, deeper, stranger meaning. One that makes him wonder what other horrors in the world he’s actually been fortunate enough to avoid.

“Felix’s right about you,” Sylvain chuckles. Now the Archbishop does quirk his brow; Felix has always gotten on well with him, for reasons he finds obvious. But when Sylvain says it, it sounds like it could be an insult. “It’s a mercenary’s answer,” he hastens to add. “You’ve always, um, done what you needed. You know I’ve always respected that about you, despite our…”

“Animosity?”

Sylvain laughs, because he doesn’t know what other sound to make, and takes a larger sip of wine than seems casual. “I was going to say ‘differences,’” he admits, “but yeah. Animosity’s probably a better word right now.”

“Hm.” The Archbishop’s gaze pierces him in that openly critical way of his, like he’s picking the elements of Sylvain Jose Gautier apart and trying to make sense of how they fit together. Abruptly, his attention returns to his wine. “You thanked me. At the end of the war.”

Sylvain doesn’t need further reminders. “I meant it, too. I’ve...Well. Not just me, but we’ve all had to find ways to deal. You know—with the ‘after’ part.” He wants to apologize, but ‘_sorry_’ is reluctant to form on his lips. It’s not even what he really feels he must say. “And you’ve seen a lot of different ‘afters.’”

There. He did it. He acknowledged it.

The Archbishop nods, that analytical expression back on his face. But this time, it’s clearly directed inwards, because there’s the slightest strain in his once-bland voice when he says, “Sometimes I wonder how different the world would be. If I...hadn’t tried to save her. If I'd just let that bandit's axe...” His hand on his wineglass remains steady as he drinks, but he’s staring at Dimitri chatting with Marianne and a tipsy-looking Ashe with an intense, unreadable expression.

“Don’t talk like that.” 

Sylvain jumps at the new addition to their conversation, but the Archbishop doesn’t even look up. Shamir has materialized by his side, utterly underdressed in her regular spymaster gear. She’s glaring, but thank the Goddess, it’s not directed at Sylvain.

“The world will always be different,” she tells the Archbishop. “You make the best with how it changes each time, no matter how many times it does.” The Archbishop can’t seem to tear his gaze away from Dimitri, but with a jolt, Sylvain recognizes the expression as the same haunted unseeing vision that had plagued Dimitri for so long and even still.

Sylvain pretends Shamir’s voice is gentler when she adds, “You’re not the only one who gets to decide what choices other people make, and you’re definitely not the only damned person who has to make new choices for them. But plenty of people don’t try to fight what they want done differently in their lives, and you did. We’re not _all_ waiting to die at others’ whims. So don’t act like your power’s as absolute as your Church tells you it is.”

If Sylvain were a better man, he’d pay attention to his formerly-expressionless Professor’s face shifting; he’d notice that blind stare recede, only to be replaced by sudden uncertainty, like he got Shamir’s reality confused with whatever vision of the past had obscured his sight.

But all Sylvain can do is listen to Shamir and think of himself. As if drawn by some genetic magnet, he finds his parents speaking with minor lords formerly of the Alliance, the regal politeness in their movements and faces a beautifully repulsive blend of superiority, strategizing, and flattery. 

The Margrave Gautier and his wife are not the only ones who get to decide what choices other people make.

“Besides,” Shamir’s voice cuts into his thoughts again, and this time he hasn’t imagined its softened tone, “I think it turned out all right in the end.” She, too, now watches Dimitri and Ingrid back on a more crowded dance floor. But somehow, although the stoicism carved into their features and posture doesn’t budge, Sylvain manages to catch seeing the sides of her fingers brushing the Archbishop’s, and seeing his fingers brush hers back. He can’t keep from grinning, but he politely lifts his head and turns away.

The Archbishop side-eyes him rather suddenly, and the cool, stiff air between them for so many moons lifts. And _that’s _a meaningful expression Sylvain’s seen on plenty of friends and is familiar with making himself.

He winks and excuses himself, leaving Fhirdiad’s Captain of the Guard and the Church of Seiros’s new Archbishop to their quiet corner. If Shamir of all people can talk about whatever time-warping abilities the holy man claims to have, Sylvain has less trouble swallowing the concept. The man’s as saintlike as Seiros with maybe even more mysteries to him, and as recently as this morning, Sylvain might have found such refusal to elaborate upon those powers worthy of eternal bitterness. And even though the Archbishop hadn’t explained, and Sylvain hadn’t apologized, and he doubts either of them ever will, being bitter towards a mercenary who never needed a Crest until the world ended…

It doesn’t interest him tonight.

He finally catches sight of Mercedes, who has now meandered to the dessert table. Powdered sugar smears each side of her mouth and Caspar clearly doesn’t know how to mention it. She looks up just as he winks, and she positively beams, white-dusted cheek to cheek.

His heart crashes in his chest with each step her way, and it only beats faster when he licks the sugar off her lips and asks her to dance.

It didn’t turn out ‘all right in the end.’ Everything’s finally started to change.

* * *

Even the warmer months in Faerghus strike bone-chilling terror into the hearts of their southern-dwelling guests. But the ballroom is too crowded and hot for Sylvain’s tastes, and Mercedes’s tolerance for the cold is...high, and after bumping into too many bad dancers packed too close, she suggests they go outside for fresh air.

They finally find an unoccupied balcony after several embarrassing interruptions. Mercedes sighs and fans herself. “Much better.” A thin sheen of sweat glimmers on the small expanse of skin between her necklace and bodice, and Sylvain’s eye keeps getting drawn to it while she updates him on what she calls the ‘neighborhood gossip’ he missed while speaking with the Archbishop.

She hadn’t asked about the conversation, although she surely must have noticed; he’d stolen the Archbishop away long enough that the man had been mobbed by believers who’d apparently been waiting their turn the moment he’d joined her. 

Sylvain wants to tell her, but he also hadn’t told her any details of their ill-fated sparring match. But there’s a way of talking to her about _change_ somehow—change for themselves, their lands, their family. _Their _family. He just needs to decide what it is.

“And Marianne! What a pleasant surprise. We hadn’t seen her since...ah. Gronder Field,” she says softly, like it’s a well-kept secret.

“Hilda’s really a miracle worker,” Sylvain chimes in to pep her up again. It works; she sighs, smiles, and shakes her head. “I’ll gladly take the credit for working miracles with _Ashe_, though. Did he come in with any more..._injuries_? Maybe, I don’t know, mouth-shaped neck bruises?” Mercedes stifles a cough similar to a laugh, and he pushes a little more. “Hopefully something sweeter than the ass-kicking _I _gave him, but whatever works—”

The smile fades from Mercedes’s face, and Sylvain wants to kick his _own _ass.

“Should I...not have mentioned the joust?”

“No!” she cuts him off. “No, please don’t censor yourself on my account. You know that.”

It’s a familiar sentence from a familiar time. But unlike then, he doesn’t fall for it and let his true feelings wrench themselves free.

“I do know that,” is all he says. If there’s anything else he knows by now, though, it’s that he thinks it’s okay for her to have her own boundaries. But he doesn’t say the sentiment aloud, insist upon it, scrutinize her. “I won’t. I promise.”

It’s still a promise kept if he doesn’t speak every single word in his head, right?

That kind of restraint, however, makes bouncing back to the conversation difficult. To where he wants to be. To tell her he’s ready, to tell her he means his proposal, that he’s not afraid if he has her by his side, that he won’t ever let anything make her feel afraid again, even if it’s something in him she fears. 

Hell, to tell her about the dick socks. That feels like a safe place to begin. “So, when I ran into you having tea with Caspar—” Sylvain starts, and isn’t prepared when Mercedes bursts into tears anyway.

“I was so afraid to watch,” she wails, out of _nowhere_, and Sylvain hates himself when he flinches at the sight of the tears rolling down her face, disappearing past the lace of her bodice.. “I was so afraid, but I was so very proud of you, Sylvain. I mean it.”

The rattling wheels turning in his mind don’t catch up with his mouth, which had _just _promised to respect her boundaries and conversation topics, when he asks, “You mean at the joust?”

He doesn’t even have time to hate himself, because the relief on her tear-streaked face that she need not elaborate her point is so plain he relaxes. “It’s so silly,” she sniffs, searching for a handkerchief to wipe her eyes. Sylvain wordlessly produces the one she’d given him as her favor only the other day. The sight of it makes her giggle a watery laugh. “I don’t quite know how to put it into words. Oh, Sylvain, I know I’m scattered,” she sighs again, “but it’s a bit frustrating to forget how to describe my own self to the person most important to me!”

Sylvain laughs softly, if nothing else than to make her relax. “It’s not just you who’s scattered, then.” He hugs her, and she clutches his shirt while her breathing slows. “Do you want to try right now? Or do you want to wait?”

He feels her shake her head, and he smooths her frizzing hair back. “I think...I think I want to dance with you.”

Sylvain pulls back and traces the curve of her jaw with the tip of his finger. He lifts her chin and smiles at her. “Out here? Not inside, where it’s warm and full of friends?”

Her lipstick’s smeared. Sylvain doesn’t have to look down to guess the remainder’s been imprinted on the center of his chest.

Mercedes smiles, and the messy makeup makes it look crooked and coy. “I have enough people to keep me warm here.”

It’s sickly sweet, one of those comments she makes because she loves to see him roll his eyes at the sound of flowery language recited back to a former skirt-chaser, but the way her eyes shine with repressed tears gives Sylvain the sneaking suspicion she just wants to hide her face.

Well. He’s only _too _happy to oblige.

“Then…” Sylvain makes a great show of bowing and offering his arm, and as luck would have it, the faintest trickle of a new song beginning floats through the open door. “May I have this dance, Lady Martritz?”

“You may, Count Gautier,” she says, and lets him sweep her into his arms.

It’s been a very long time anyone’s bothered to call him anything bordering respectful like that, and it occurs to him for the first time in ages how he’ll have to start preparing to hear _Margrave _aimed at his ears.

Mercedes nuzzles close, probably smearing more makeup on his clothes, and Sylvain wipes all thoughts from his mind. Just the feel of her dress, her hair tucked under his chin, her hands gently stroking circles on his back.

It’s nothing like the proper ballroom etiquette he learned growing up, or mastered in school, or tried teaching Mercedes. It’s more _swaying _than dancing—holding each other, rocking on their heels, sometimes turning with something resembling a beat.

It would be poor form, but Sylvain suspects he wouldn’t mind staying out here the rest of the long evening. Holding and being held, silent understanding of talks yet to be had, and the faint sounds of music on the crisp nighttime breeze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so very, very much as always for your feedback and support and love!!! I'm blown away each and every time I see one of your thoughtful comments.
> 
> If you don't have a twitter but for whatever unbelievably kind reason wanted to know if I'll have any updates, go over to [@NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites). 
> 
> Thank you again so, so very much for your continued kindness and excitement!! i see u out there sayin/doin nice things, dont think i dont


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> meet me out back behind the Starbucks drive-thru if you want a lecture on why Azure Moon ending in August does not make sense from a narrative perspective and/or want to learn what Ludonarrative Dissonance means outside the context of an Uncharted 4 PlayStation Network gold achievement
> 
> Check me out [@NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites) if you'd like to chat about the Future! And thank you so so so so so very much, as always, for these lovely comments you all shower upon me. You make checking my email a delight and much less stressful.

Calculating thoughts occupy Sylvain’s mind as he and Mercedes follow the exiting crowd from the ballroom and break off to the residential wings with the other palace guests. Dimitri had delivered a speech at the end of the ball, something somber about remembering to temper their happiness and freedom with sorrow for those who did not live to enjoy it. He’d addressed the crowd with shoulders squared and voice strong, but Sylvain had known him long enough to see the fatigue doing its best to remind him of the bloody, deranged path he’d almost dragged the country along to get to this point. Ingrid had smiled at him over Dimitri’s shoulder, however, shaking her head like she could _see _the concern Sylvain hadn’t quite formed on his expression. And true enough, the King of Faerghus visibly relaxed when the room erupted in cheers and applause and prayer.

Sylvain’s not a king, and he won’t pretend he even begins to understand what hells this particular king has gone through. But Sylvain’s also a man with power in his own right, as well as his own demons, and Dimitri seems to be on his way to shouldering those painful responsibilities enough that he can inspire change the country sorely needs.

Maybe it’s time for Sylvain to cash in on the promise he’d made Dimitri swear so many years ago—maybe it’s time Dimitri can help _him _with something he’s good at.

“That’s a very thoughtful face,” Mercedes says to him once their bedroom door closes. She stands before the mirror to remove her jewelry but talks to his reflection. “You’ve been very quiet since we left the ballroom.”

“Hm, yeah.” Sylvain stares at nothing, fingers blindly fumbling for the clasps on his cloak. Bringing the box of his current purchases won’t be much of an issue for him; he is the heir, after all, and no surprise road inspector will dare pull over the Gautier caravan anyway. The problem is more that he has to _smuggle_ contraceptives; there’s way more exciting contraband to go to prison for, and the fact regular folk are in prison at all for something as unglamorous and common as _wanting to fuck because it feels good and not worry about an unwanted tinier person joining the party nine months after the event _is probably the first thing he wants addressed.

That’s an easy place to start, right? Maybe he can spin it as an economic thing: ’Margrave Gautier, I address this local court with concern over the capacity of our prisons and what crimes merit occupancy over other, less financially-concerning crimes’—

“We don’t have to talk about it, if you’d rather not.” A smile tints the edges of Mercedes’s voice, and Sylvain comes back to himself. 

“Eh, nothing so dramatic,” he grins at her reflection. It’s not worth getting into yet, but…“Just thinking about grand political maneuvers, megalomania, sex, crime...the usual.”

She shakes her head and snaps shut the last of her jewelry boxes. “Of course. Not dramatic at all.”

Sylvain comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her waist. He presses a soft kiss on her temple and smiles against her skin when she hums. “Had fun?”

“I’ll be sorry to leave tomorrow.” Sylvain rests his chin on top of her head, looking at the two of them in the mirror standing like in a commissioned portrait. She reaches up and strokes his bicep while she talks. “But I suppose we had such a lovely time because it was a special occasion. We can enjoy everyone’s company even more when we don’t see them every day.”

Her hand’s weight on his arm, rubbing little circles into the fabric, fills him with such sudden affection it takes him aback. “What a shame I don’t ever plan on leaving _your _company,” he mumbles into her hair. “We’ll never know just how much more we can enjoy each other.”

Mercedes laughs, equally surprised by his intensity, and she leans more into his embrace. “Oh, dear. I think I can live with never knowing.”

He chuckles and disentangles himself. That’s quite enough sappy-sweet for the night, he thinks. And Mercedes seems to agree, albeit in a way he doesn’t expect; she grabs the front of his cloak before he’s gone too far and pulls him close enough to slip her tongue into his mouth.

He’s breathless when their lips break free with a sweet wet _pop_. “Love you, too,” he gasps. The dexterity with which she unhooks each clasp on his cloak sends heat rushing to his face.

Mercedes sighs and pets his chest, smoothing out the wrinkles she’s made on his shirt. “We’re going to be trapped with your parents for a week,” she says. “I know you saw their faces every time Ingrid…” She trails off meaningfully.

He had.

Sylvain puts his hand over hers on his buttons. He’s not sure what to say and is almost relieved when Mercedes opens her mouth again, until—

“I don’t want anyone to tell me how to love you. I hate that I finally—I finally get to _touch _you like this and have absolutely anyone think I only get to love you for one purpose. And I hate that...that I feel awful every time I even _imagine _the...purpose, or even...hoping in the future, because—Sylvain, I...I know how you feel about...children. Heirs.”

_Oh, Goddess_.

Sylvain can’t speak around the sudden lump in his throat. His hand turns limp, and only remains resting on hers because her wrist still supports it.

He’s always been so easy for her to read. 

“Sylvain, I want you to promise me something.”

_Oh, Goddess._

Can he?

“Promise me you’ll never let what happened to my mother happen to me.”

Mercedes’s voice is as even as it was when she’d first spoken of her past to him. Casual, dismissive, but now he can recognize the undercurrent of pain he hadn’t heard hidden in her words all those years ago.

Sylvain’s heart _stops_.

And his hands _move_.

“Never,” he swears, cupping her face in his hands. His fingers tremble on her jaw and it takes all his crumbling restraint not to squeeze, like that will seal the promise twice over. “_Never_, Mercedes. Don’t think for one fucking second I won’t ruin anyone who even _thinks _about it.”

The word ‘_anyone_’ spoken in his voice seems to echo around the room. Mercedes smiles, a soft little thing between his shaking hands. “Oh, good. That’s one less thing to worry about tomorrow, then.”

Sylvain laughs, a bit of hysteria tinting the edges of the sound, and smashes a searing kiss on her lips. His tongue’s barely withdrawn when he rests his forehead against hers and says against her gasping mouth, “It’s you and me. It’s only you and me that matters.” He pushes her hand tighter against his chest, his heart. “Anything we do, anything we have...we’ll get it because _we _want it.”

Mercedes strokes his cheek with the backs of her fingers. “You and me against the world, huh?”

Sylvain offers her a lopsided smile. “We promised to protect each other, right?” Mercedes sets her jaw and nods. A sudden shiver wracks his frame, and he swallows hard around more words, more promises he can’t quite voice yet. So instead, pretending he can’t hear the desperation in his own voice, he demands like he’s begging, “Touch me, love.”

* * *

Sylvain rakes a hand through his sweaty hair and chokes out a laugh. “Oh, hell. I have to be careful what I wish for, huh?”

“Should I stop, then?”

“_No_!” 

Mercedes laughs at the sheer panic in his voice and nuzzles a particularly large scar on his ribs, tongue peeking out for an instant to taste the crooked white lines. Her fingers pinch his nipple and Sylvain snaps a curse. Her lips trail a path back up to it—_away _from his unlaced breeches, damn her—and she laps an apologetic tongue over the abused peak. The stiff fabric of her dress brushes over his crotch when she shifts, and Sylvain doesn’t bother covering his broken moan.

Every nerve in his body is wound tight with anticipation, hoping it will be the next to feel her touch. He’d thought he’d get to untie all those careful pink ribbons on the back of her dress when she’d stripped him of both cloak and shirt. He thought he’d get to explore every soft inch of her skin with his fingertips, his mouth, his body. 

But Mercedes had dedicated herself to his request through and through, and she didn’t seem to agree it extended to her just yet, too. 

“So nice,” she breathes against the dip between his collarbones. “I love being able to touch you like this. It’s really nice.”

It’s so sweet, so cute to feel her touch in silly, not particularly sensual places: smoothing his eyebrow with the tip of one finger; little pecks on the underside of his arms; hands stroking his chest, sides, back in senseless patterns.

But Sylvain’s never been so aware of how _much _of him there is, how many intricacies there are in even a single twitching muscle for Mercedes to map, and how much of him she still has left to touch. Even the way her fingers ghost along the slope of his shoulder sends heat coiling in his gut.

By the time she’s kissing a path down his chest again and loosening his breeches even more, Sylvain is drenched in sweat.

“Oh, please, yes, please,” he babbles when she finally takes him in hand. Something he would almost dare to call a _smirk _flashes across her lips before she tugs the lace on her bodice this way and that and—

Mercedes lifts one breast out and over the neckline, then the other, and Sylvain’s mouth goes dry. She gives his cock a slow stroke up, and his hips desperately follow the motion.

“Too hot,” he pants. “Let me—” He starts shimmying out of the stupid breeches trapping him, and Mercedes releases her grip to help slide his legs free.

Sylvain kicks them off, nearly stubbing his toe on the bedpost in the process. Mercedes settles between his thighs, on her stomach now, and he moans when the tops of her breasts brush just against his balls. 

But now that Mercedes has more of him to _touch_, she leaves his aching cock alone and commences to explore every scar, every hair, every muscle in his legs and hips. Sylvain is equal parts desperate for her to continue and desperate for her to _stop_, to give him a chance to come, because these torturous, searing, light touches only make his climax seem that much farther away.

Mercedes is quiet while she tongues the dimple in his left knee; runs her fingers up and down his thighs; nibbles the hard angles of his hipbones; rakes her nails along the sensitive, hopeful parts of his inner thighs. Sylvain is glad for her silence while he whispers nonsensical praises and prayers into his hand over his mouth, but he can still _hear _her marvel at him, his body, how much she loves it.

But she’s silent. And her silence means she loves _him_.

Tomorrow, Sylvain will probably be _mortified _by the memory of his voice as he chokes “Thank you, Goddess, _thank_ you” when Mercedes finally licks a stripe up his cock. 

This is not tomorrow.

No, this is now, and right _now _Mercedes is stroking him with one hand while her tongue rolls lazy circles around his tip. Every few breathless seconds, she sucks lightly, little dots of precum disappearing onto her pink tongue. Sylvain reaches blindly for her, unaware he’s even closed his eyes, and the feel of her fingers squeezing his back makes them flutter back open.

The tip of his cock rests against her smiling lips, the pretty, pale curves of her breasts brushing just against the shaft. Affection glows so brightly in her blue eyes even in this room lit only with a single fire. 

“Mercedes,” he whispers, and that’s her cue to look him dead in the eyes and swallow him whole. 

He _screams_.

Mercedes’s mouth slides off fast and Sylvain’s about to assure her he’s _beyond _fine. But she coughs loudly and her voice is strained when she laughs, “Too much!” Sylvain manages to laugh, too, but he’s wholly unprepared anyway for her to stroke the thick vein under his shaft, chase the finger with her tongue, and take him back into her mouth. Less deeply this time, but Goddess, she still feels _holy_.

What Mercedes lacks in experience she makes up for in enthusiasm. She lavishes the same attention on each inch of his cock she did on the rest of his body. No part goes unexplored by her tongue, her fingers. Sylvain shouts a curse when she carefully sucks on his balls, one, then the other. And when she presses her thumb on the skin just behind, humming a question while he’s _still partway down her throat_, whatever meaningless responses Sylvain mumbles back is enough to get her to giggle around him.

Goddess, but she’s beautiful.

And he’s _happy_.

He needs to tell her.

“I need to tell you,” Sylvain says without even meaning to. Mercedes hums again, and he about spills inside her mouth then and there. “Oh, _fuck_!”

His cock slips out from her lips again, and she licks the tip with the flat of her tongue. “Tell me,” she reminds him softly.

Sylvain just stares, chest rising and falling so fast he’s ready to believe his heart’s trying to escape it. The last bits of her lipstick have long been lost to his chest, arms, neck, clothing. Those rose-tinted lips are red because of _him_—his kisses, his teeth, his cock. “Oh, fuck,” he repeats. 

Mercedes laughs and lowers her head again, and seconds before her tongue touches him, Sylvain remembers.

“I think I waited my entire life to love you.”

Mercedes, taken aback, moans around him, and he can’t be bothered to say anything else because she speeds up, stroking his slick cock deeper into her mouth, against her tongue, letting him thrust as gently as he thinks he’s capable.

He’s deeper inside than she’s been able to take him before when she _swallows_, and—

“_I’mgonnacome_.”

Mercedes’s darkened blue eyes flick up to his face, and whatever she sees there is enough for her to take a deep breath through her nose, ignore his warning, push down even _more_, and _moan_.

She can only last a second there before she needs to come up for air, but Sylvain lasts _less_. Her next sound is one of surprise when Sylvain finally, _finally_ reaches his release, and Goddess help him, but the sight of the first drop of seed to slip through her lips is enough to make him growl, be greedy, thrust into her hand even as she pulls off him so he can spill the rest onto her bare breasts.

He doesn’t even have the presence of mind to do anything other than to cry out something wordless. Mercedes grabs his hand when she finally notices him groping at nothing, stroking him through his last shudders, pressing hot kisses to his thigh, hip, stomach.

Sylvain’s grip on her hand goes limp, and Mercedes takes the hint and lets go of his softening dick before it grows uncomfortable in its sensitivity. Her hand is sticky with his seed, and he feels no small measure of primal satisfaction at the sight of the thick strands on her breasts.

Mercedes follows the direction he’s aiming his tired smirk and sighs, wiping her hand inelegantly on the sheets. “Thank you for missing the dress.”

“Any time,” Sylvain croaks, shocked and embarrassed by the raspiness of his voice. But Mercedes laughs and slides off the bed with a quick kiss to his sweaty forehead. He closes his eyes and smiles. The sound of rustling fabric forces him to crack his eyes open, and he’s surprised to see Mercedes in her nightgown, tossing a damp, soapy cloth into the laundry basket. “Don’t you want—”

Mercedes clambers back into bed and tucks herself into the covers. She kisses his neck, sucking the skin just a little too long for innocence’s sake, and shakes her head. “I just wanted to see you look this happy. And we have to wake up early.”

Sylvain can’t even be bothered to take that as a test of his efficiency. Because the second she reminds him, he suddenly can’t remember being so tired in his life. “Yeah, I guess so.” He rolls off the bed, and his boneless limbs somehow succeed in finding something resembling sleep pants. Mercedes is curled on her side facing him as usual when he crawls back in.

He tucks a loose blond strand behind her ears, and she hums a sleepy little noise. “Mercedes,” he whispers, and she nuzzles closer, only half-awake. “I would do it all again. I would go through _everything _again to be with you for another lifetime.”

Mercedes’s sigh almost sounds like the beginning of tears, but she’s smiling against his shoulder when she snuggles closer. “Thank you for being here with me in this one.”

* * *

Their Royal Majesties themselves come to see House Gautier and their entourage off in the morning. It would have been a wonderful way to say goodbye had his parents not been making such a big fuss over Ingrid, now that it’s just them in private, the “old family friends.” 

“How exciting for us of the older generation to see new life and new love in the ones we’ve seen grow up,” Mother giggles, gesturing to Ingrid’s stomach. Ingrid blushes and smiles, and Sylvain’s surprised to note it’s a pretty genuine expression.

“I thank you for your blessing, Lady Gautier.”

“Well, I hope we’re to be _blessed _soon, too!” Mother laughs, turning her fond expression on Sylvain, and it takes all his willpower not to recoil. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn your children will be growing up together, too, what with the _excitement _we heard this month—”

“Enough,” Margrave Gautier says impatiently with a wave of his hand. He’s snappier and greyer these days, and if Mother had hoped the topic of _new life _would invigorate or cheer him, she was sorely mistaken. “Leave the children to their duty; commentary is unnecessary. Your Majesty, if I could commend you on—”

Dimitri gestures at Sylvain while his father offers the customary gratuitous thanks, and the two friends step aside. Discomfort rolls off the younger man in waves, and Sylvain would be more amused were he not so uncomfortable, too. He sees Mercedes hugging Annette goodbye in the corner and wishes he could yell a warning across the hall not to join their own group until Ingrid and Dimitri are far out of his parents’ line of sight.

“Well,” Dimitri’s usual weak smile is almost heartening in its disingenuity, “allow me to offer commendations of my own. I hear promising things from your territory on the great strides House Gautier is taking in war relief efforts.”

“War relief efforts?”

Dimitri nods. “I don’t know if you realize, but I’ve received all the reports and progress summaries about Gautier lands’ several new orphanages and all the—soup kitchens, are they called?”

“And you actually _read _them?” 

The king ignores him. _Incredible_—_he really has grown up_. “Even if it’s not the _true _sentiment of every noble in your lands, the people feel as though their losses and pain are respected and worth something. That the nobility notices they’re not the only ones left widowers and orphans—that even more have gone hungry and homeless. That commoners didn’t die in a war chosen by kingdoms and empires only to be forgotten after.”

Sylvain’s eyes drift back to Mercedes, who has not heard his silent warnings and has now joined Ingrid and Sylvain’s parents. The smile’s frozen on her face, and Sylvain feels both guilty and relieved Dimitri’s taken him away from that conversation.

“You’re congratulating me, but you should really be thanking my wife,” Sylvain nods, unashamed of the way he feels his expression go soft. “All those plans and ‘public nobility involvement?’ All her.”

He expects to see amusement on Dimitri’s face, not irritation, and his tender smile falters. “Goddess, Sylvain. You’ve left that all to _Mercedes_? You really haven’t changed, even after all this?”

Sylvain flinches, and as if mirroring his movements, Mercedes tries backing away from her own conversation towards the carriage house. A swift, sharp look from the Margrave, however, halts her progress, and Mother continues her chatter to a steadily-more fatigued Ingrid.

Sylvain has had quite enough of this. But no dismissive, deflective joke comes to mind, and it doesn’t seem like he’s going to be able to get out of this exchange without at least a modicum of candor.

He _does _feel guilty. He feels guilty and useless that he can’t openly lend Mercedes a hand, show the people the next Margrave Gautier is utterly invested in relieving their pain, because there’s a _different _Margrave in charge, and _that_ Gautier has his eye more on the people of Sreng than the people in his own home.

But it’s only _openly _that Sylvain can’t help.

Mercedes doesn’t know how to recruit and hire skilled craftsmen to construct buildings or smith tools. She doesn’t know how to ask the nobility for letters of recommendation regarding their best cooks, or how to compensate those nobles for sparing the extra hands. She doesn’t know how to navigate the monthly population records, funeral permits, and soldier pensions to find widows who still have homes large enough to take in children but no spouse’s income to support them, and who would be grateful to take in those children whom the orphanages cannot. 

Sylvain does. He’s got the upbringing and, most importantly, the _power _for it. And for once, such a thing is of _use _to people other than social climbers. He knows not only how to find such hired help, but how to make sure the money goes from the Gautier treasure vaults to people in need...without their treasurer thinking twice about what Sylvain means when he submits invoices vaguely labeled “citizen upkeep.”

This is, however, a lot of information to dump on his friend and king. And beyond it being emotionally exhausting, Sylvain very badly wants to extract Mercedes from his parents’ claws. So instead, he asks Dimitri, “How many of your advisors know about your days in the slums? When you’d go from hovel to hovel, hungry until you could eat something you stole. Or killed. Both, I bet.”

Dimitri’s eyes go dark and blank with open grief and shadow-filled memories, and before Sylvain can feel too badly about it, he adds, “I don’t know how you convinced ‘em Fhirdiad’s poorer districts are worth more guard rotations and posts, or lower produce taxes in the markets. But I’m guessing you tried out some flowery political rhetoric _before _you resorted to, you know, horrific personal anecdotes.” That startles a chuckle from Dimitri, and the ghosts retreat from his expression.

“It didn’t seem the best opening strategy for my reign,” he admits.

Sylvain shrugs. “Yeah, probably not. It’s not what the ‘Savior King’ would do. And me? I’m a good-for-nothing. I’d disappoint my parents if I start acting useful, huh?”

He winks, but Dimitri just looks baffled. His brows knit together, and in that moment, despite the eyepatch and youth, he suddenly looks like the king Sylvain knew as a child. And Dimitri is King now—not just a friend, not just King Lambert’s son. And King Dimitri need to know the future Margrave Sylvain Jose Gautier is doing is damned best to rebuild the Kingdom.

“I’ve never...loved that appellation,” Dimitri says. Sylvain nods.

“If I can tell you a secret, Your Majesty?” Sylvain says the title with his usual irreverence, and Dimitri smirks. “I don’t love being called a good-for-nothing. But it’s too late for us both; that’s what people think we are. And if you want to get _anything _done in this world, you gotta give the people what they _think _they want.”

Sylvain doesn’t wink again, but something seems to click in Dimitri’s mind. He squints, and Sylvain can feel that doubtlessly Professor-influenced stare, like he’s being scrutinized, picked apart, observed. Understood. Dimitri sets his jaw, crosses his arms over his chest, and jerks his chin at the little gathering of friends and family. “Your father,” he begins, and with the start of _that _sentence comes the weight of a long-lost childhood and too many bruised memories. “His health is not what it once was.”

Sylvain nods. He doesn’t need to look to see the Margrave still standing tall and proud despite the tremors in his legs and the way he pretends he’s taking Mother’s arm when really she’s lending him support. He does hear movement, like conversation is finally wrapping up.

“I’m sorry. I wish your parents had...changed.”

Sylvain barks a laugh that surprises him. “Oh, man. I’m glad they didn’t.” Dimitri’s brows shoot up. “Starting a family of your own,” Sylvain continues, watching their carriage finally roll up to the gates as a relieved-looking Mercedes waves him over with a frustrated-looking pregnant Ingrid by her side, “it’s a lot easier on the heart than _replacing _one if you never had one to begin with.”

_Oops_.

He’d meant for the words to sound glib and mildly self-deprecating.

He doesn’t think they do.

A new joke is forming on his lips when Dimitri surprises him by roaring with laughter and slaps his back hard enough Sylvain thinks his boots sink into the dirt a little. He’s pretty sure his jaw hits the floor when Dimitri’s booming laugh calms enough for him to say, “And it’s a _lot _more _pleasurable_.”

* * *

“I thought we’d _never _be free of them! An _entire _week...”

Mercedes chucks her travel boots aside like they, and not Sylvain’s parents, have personally offended her. Goddess, but it’s good to be home. And _alone_.

“Whatever could you mean, sweetheart? ‘Didn’t you _see_ the way His Majesty positively _doted _on Her Majesty? Like he was falling in love with her—’”

“‘_All over again_,’” Mercedes finishes quoting his mother. She wrinkles her nose in disgust and huffs. “How utterly indelicate. Please forgive me for saying so of your parents, Sylvain—”

“I won’t forgive you if you _don’t_ say so.”

She sighs, dramatically throws off the last of her travel gear in the direction of her dressing room, and flops backwards onto the bed. “They had been on such good behavior the entire trip. I suppose I’m not surprised they had a quite a few..._opinions_ bottled up after all that. They must have been dying to enjoy an entire private week to share them.”

Sylvain snorts and finishes tossing his things aside, too. He’s glad their trunks had been sent ahead. He throws off his shirt and cracks the wardrobe box open to begin the hunt for his favorite robe. “Fair enough. I guess. I mean, I know they had trouble just with having me and my shitty brother, but I feel like I could have lived the rest of my life not...being painted a picture of my youthful parents _strategically, soullessly fucking literally all the time_.”

Mercedes chokes out a laugh into her hands. “I don’t blame you. It sounded less like a painting, however—”

“_Stop_.”

“—and more of a...a rational, detailed—”

“Mercedes, _please_—”

“—color-coded anatomical diagram. In fact, I could probably sketch—”

“Stop!” What Sylvain had meant as a growl comes out as a petulant whine. He settles for tackling her and putting his hands over her giggling lips. “I’m a little busy trying to forget literally _everything my parents have ever told us_.”

Mercedes pipes up under his fingers, “Now I’m even more impressed by your popularity, considering such, ah, unimaginative role models.”

She’s making a joke out of it, but Sylvain isn’t quite able to smile. The expression he makes must be truly awful, because her laughter dies, too. “Oh. Ah, I don’t mean—when people throw themselves at you, I meant—”

Sylvain cuts off her unnecessary apologies with a quick kiss, and she takes his silence as forgiveness. They settle back into the sheets again. Their own sheets. Goddess, but it’s good to be back in their own bed.

This is the bedroom Sylvain has always had since he was old enough to leave the nursery. Besides the Officers Academy, he’s never known any other—he’s always been a Gautier, and no one has ever let him forget it. But Mercedes...

He and Mercedes shift onto their sides at the same time, and they study each other’s faces with the same somber expressions. Every time he looks at her, he finds new details to fixate on. The smallest birthmark hidden by the hair on her right temple. The way one eye’s lashes are a bit longer than the other’s. 

What did Mercedes’s parents look like? 

What did her brother?

How much of any of them resemble her? Sylvain wants to ask, wants to find out if she even knows, but fear doesn’t let him.

“Hey, Mercedes.”

She blinks at him, slow and steady. “Hm?”

“We don’t have a lot of family to share with each other, huh?”

Her blinking speeds up, but there are no budding tears to blink away. Her expression’s not quite sad when she replies, “It doesn’t feel that way, no.”

They inch closer on the bed. “I want to make it up to you,” Sylvain breathes, fingers itching to touch her. “But not...now.”

“No...not now.”

Mercedes leans in, and he closes his eyes when her forehead brushes against his.

“I’m glad you’re my family now,” she whispers, and that’s enough for Sylvain to bridge that infinitesimal distance between them and capture her lips with his own.

She smells like lavender perfume and tastes like cool summer sunshine. Her tongue teases a slow circle against the roof of his mouth, and he pushes her on her back at the same time that he moans. Each slide of his lips against hers sends goosebumps prickling along his skin, and his hands can’t seem to find a favorite place to stop and hold her, to touch her. He massages the curve of her waist, tilts her head to the side to graze his teeth on her neck, swallows her tiny moans while cradling her face in his hands.

She’s grinding against him, slow and unhurried, and this leisurely pace is the precise sweetness Sylvain never really knew how much he craved until right now. 

“We need—” Sylvain tries to say as his arms get tangled in the robe she’s pushing off his shoulders, “sometime, we need to talk about—” He breaks off with a shudder when the silk finally falls off.

“Yes,” Mercedes agrees with a messy kiss below his earlobe.

“I,” he swallows, suddenly nervous, suddenly remembering everything he could have and _didn’t _do, and her lips peck his jaw encouragingly. “I am so sorry.”

Her speed slows. A few more cautious kisses, and she sits up on her knees to read his face. “Not now, though?” she asks. She traces a soothing circle on his knee, and he smiles gratefully.

“No, not now.” Mercedes surges forward for another kiss, and Sylvain eagerly plunders her mouth with his tongue. When she guides his hands to the laces of her dress, he breaks away from her mouth to promise, “But I know we’ll do it.”

Mercedes helps him free her from the rest of her dress. As he flips the gown up and over her head, she whispers, “Thank you for being my friend.”

He has her dress bunched up in his hand still, and the sentence startles him enough that he doesn’t even finish casting it off the bed. “Yeah, of course,” he says without thinking. 

She cups his cheek, and he leans into her palm, quirking his lips into a smile. She’s wearing nothing but plain, comfortable underclothes, and he’s not in anything more interesting or less revealing. If this is ‘friendship,’ he’s clearly been doing it all wrong. But the sincerity in her eyes stabs at something vulnerable, frightened, and excited buried deep within him. So does the unabashed happiness in her voice when she says, “It’s so much easier for family to protect each other if they like each other, too.”

And the vulnerable, frightened, excited thing inside him caves in on itself.

“I like you,” Sylvain says, equal parts breathless and choked with emotion. “I like you so much. I like you just like this,” he says, reaching around with shaking hands to unclasp her brassiere. He hooks it around his finger and lays it aside. Her breasts fill his hands, and he slides his palms underneath, then down, trailing all over her chest, her stomach, her sides. “I like you in every way, I—”

Mercedes, who has been turning pinker and more short of breath with each fleeting touch, silences him with a deep, lingering kiss. “Show me,” she whispers, wrapping her arms around his neck.

Sylvain spends the rest of the day trying. And it feels so damned good that one day won’t be enough for him to succeed.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> your comments and kindness forever ruins me and makes my heart batter against my ribs; thank you as always!!!
> 
> And, as always, hang out with me on my foolishly-linked-to-professional-stuff twitter [@NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites) or, more recently, the Felannie Discord server, because I caved to peer pressure and also wanna be a Cool Kid. Everyone there's delightfully chill & welcoming so you should poke your head in!! also i am there with elephant emojis https://discord.gg/RfywSDH
> 
> I have a list of things that people said they may be interested in reading next, but I would love to have you talk to me more about that! Hope you have fun with me in the final stretch :>

“Yes, fuck, you’re perfect, so perfect, Mercedes—”

This time, Mercedes is kneeling between his legs off the edge of the bed. She’s taking him farther into her mouth than she ever has managed before, tongue hot and wet and teasing, but it’s the way she looks at him with her blue eyes full of satisfied confidence even with his cock halfway down her throat that has Sylvain shouting when he comes.

The way she _looks _when she does this with him is always the most important part.

* * *

“Love you, honey, but we don’t usually call what I’m doing ‘gentle.’”

It’s not and he’s barely teasing, but he admits this wasn’t what he’d been expecting. This time, Mercedes had politely demanded he wash her hair with a new soap from her favorite chemist, and Sylvain had interpreted that as a challenge to see if he can make her come twice before the bathwater got cold. He’s gotten her halfway to climax three times and steam still rises from the water, so she admittedly hasn’t even reached orgasm number one, because backing off _just _when her thighs start trembling fills him with an evil kind of glee.

So when Mercedes _snarls _back, “I don’t _want_ gentle anymore,” and grabs his hand, directs it where she _needs_, Sylvain can still revel in his victory.

* * *

“No, I believe Sylvain is greeting the new captain at the barracks today, and I know his wife is busy at one of her..._feeding houses_.”

“That _boy_ of yours...You’ve been too soft on him since the war, my lady. He can’t be bothered to speak with his own father unless summoned?”

His parents’ disapproving voices bicker past the doorway down the hall, and Sylvain muffles his laughter against Mercedes’s neck. He’s cornered her in a tiny storage closet for this secret escapade; they’d started in a disused guest parlor, but Sylvain had recognized his father’s limping bootsteps and pushed her inside the closet he remembered hiding in as a child. Now, the closet’s use has been vastly repurposed, and Sylvain much prefers it. It’s less lonely than it was.

It is true that he _was _meeting the captain of the guard today—and he had. It is also true Mercedes _was _supervising breakfast rations at the refugee kitchen—and she had. And if the Gautier lord and lady want to believe they’re both _still _occupied with those activities instead of avoiding his parents in the best way possible...Well, neither Sylvain nor Mercedes will correct them.

“Yes,” she gasps, angling her hips away from his mouth and towards the quizzical third finger curling lightly at her entrance next to his other two buried deep, “please, inside me, please.”

Sylvain holds her flush against the wall when she tightens around his fingers and licks all the sweetest spaces between them. Mercedes falls to pieces on his tongue to the sound of him hushing her, soothing her through the shivers, and this furtive, rebellious time, she cuts off his quiet, breathless laughter by unlacing his own trousers to leave messy lipstick kisses in exciting new places.

* * *

It’s as hot as Faerghus ever gets and hotter than Gautier territory has any right to be, so Sylvain hasn’t the faintest idea how he’s talked himself into coming out here. 

He’s recognizable today, and intentionally so. Even if the Gautier summer cape didn’t glitter around his shoulders, his colorful clothes highlighting his distinctive red hair stand out in the workers’ district like spilled blood on white sheets. 

Funnily enough, he still has to make quick escapes whenever some ex-lover of his—or, more commonly, one of their angry relatives or _current _lovers—catches sight of him. But after several of these detours, Sylvain finally arrives at the orphanage.

It’s the newest one. And it’s not the last. Maybe, in cities far away from Sreng and hungry politicians prowling its borders, such a realization would cause grief. No grim understanding that parents will forever have cause to leave children abandoned should be reason for celebration. But here, in Gautier’s castle town, where a foreign threat always looms even in times of peace, what’s the use of building orphanages when one could just as easily build barracks? Some things are more multipurpose than others. Those things, claim the Gautier lords for generations past, get priority.

Too bad for multipurpose barracks, then, that this current generation of Gautier nobility has different priorities.

“Mar—milord!” The headmistress hurries from a side corridor, dusting floury hands on her worn apron. “Forgive us for not offering you a proper—”

Sylvain waves his hand, dismissing both her fretting and his small guard. The soldiers peel off and take position by the orphanage’s entrance. They don’t bother hiding their curiosity, exchanging politely puzzled looks with the kids poking their heads out of doors.

“Nothing to forgive. It’s not really like I gave advance notice.”

The woman hesitates, fingers frozen against her dress. It’s true, and it wasn’t exactly courteous on Sylvain’s part. But if this is the next Margrave’s first appearance at a shelter for vulnerable kids, he wants to set the expectation that the _real _man of the house could drop by at any point and better not see any of those vulnerable kids in bad shape.

Sylvain flashes her his most winning smile, and one of the older orphans to her side turns embarrassingly-bright red. “I’m happy I showed up when I did. Just look at you: surrounded by smiling kids, all of ‘em with full bellies and nice clothes, and—are those peach buns?” Sylvain bends down to grin at the toddler who’s just waddled up to him with a half-eaten sweet in his chubby, grubby fist.

“Darling, come, don’t bother the—”

The toddler waves the peach bun at the headmistress and offers Sylvain a gummy smile. “Nan’s!”

“She made them?”

An enthusiastic nod. Tension Sylvain hadn’t realized had plagued him all day relaxes from his shoulders. This woman had come recommended to him by a friend of a friend of a friendly acquaintance, but he’s stunned and relieved all the same to learn she’s as friendly and adept a cook as he’d been told.

The half-eaten peach bun suddenly bumps into his nose, and Sylvain flinches back. “Sorry,” the toddler apologizes before the headmistress can, and the peach bun retreats. But not too far. Based on the kid’s wide-eyed stare and suddenly-shy grin, it’s not too unreasonable a guess that the peach bun is intended as a gift.

The child can’t be older than three. When he smiles, it’s through shiny drool and only two bottom teeth. They match up to the teethmarks on the soft dough.

It’s a little gross.

Sylvain can practically sense the waves of despair rolling off the headmistress. “Oh, I’m sure his Lordship isn’t one for such common sweets—”

_Torches flickering in the moonlight, sharing secrets on a crumbling stone tower._

_“I don’t think I’ve ever eaten something so worth savoring in my life_._”_

Sylvain grins at the crestfallen toddler and extends his hand. “I’ll make an exception for a good friend.”

But the sticky thing is...still pretty gross. He prepares himself to suffer through some disgusting toddler-borne ailment courtesy of ingesting a gently-used dessert when the dimmest memory of making a young Ingrid laugh flashes in his brain.

Sylvain covers his hands over the thing completely and makes dramatic chewing noises at a believable distance. He makes a great show of stopping, sighing, and rubbing his stomach before depositing the peach bun back in the kid’s hand. “Wow, I’m so full! That thing is so good—but it’s so much I don’t think I can finish it!” He gets to his feet with a quick ruffle to the toddler’s hair, and the kid wastes no time shoving it back into his smiling mouth. “Uh, make sure to save room for dinner, my friend. Nan’s a good cook, right?” The kid nods and babbles something cheerful through the bun. “And maybe she has a good idea by now what kind of things the kids eat the most…?”

The headmistress comes back to herself and picks her jaw off the ground. “Yes,” she stammers, “yes, to your rooms now! Free time for all of you while the Margr—while the young lord and I speak.”

He’s never had so much fun discussing finances and building upkeep before. Sylvain spends the better part of the day going over budgets in one closet-sized office after another in orphanages and soup kitchens citywide. He’s exhausted by the time his retinue crosses back over the castle bridge, as are his soldiers.

But _Goddess_, is he satisfied.

* * *

He awakens slowly and naturally, rolling out of his dreams into the warm comfort of creeping summer sunlight. Mercedes’s even breathing draws him out of unconsciousness, like a metronome relaxing him into the day.

Sylvain’s slept better than he has in months. Years, maybe. And there’s absolutely no cause for it he can find.

He lets his mind go blank as he reaches over her shoulder and pets her hair. Just the tips of his fingers glancing across the rumpled strands, hardly even touching. Sleepy morning thoughts bumble around his empty mind until she finally stirs beneath his hand.

Mercedes, on her side as always, blinks herself into awareness. Her blue eyes uncloud and fix on his stupidly smiling face. “G’morning,” she says into the pillow.

“Hi.”

She sighs and nuzzles into his palm, which has now crept around to cup her cheek. “I didn’t think I’d wake up like this,” she confesses. “Weren’t you meeting with your father this morning?”

Sylvain runs his fingers up and down the side of her face, watches while she struggles to remain awake. “No, after you went to bed, a servant told me not to bother.” She frowns beneath her closed eyes and makes questioning hum. “He’s...not feeling well.”

Her eyes flutter open again. “But that was last night.”

“I know.”

Silence descends. Sylvain’s hand moves to stroking circles on her back, but they’re both fully awake by now.

These canceled plans have come about more frequently as of late. It’s not usually his father who cancels them—it’s his mother, or his father’s oldest and most loyal soldiers and confidants. But this message had come directly from his father...via a servant, yes, but the missive was in his father’s handwriting. So the stubborn man must be truly feeling ill.

Sylvain’s a noble, and the nobility _inherit _their titles. They’re _passed down_, which means they receive such power only once those before them pass _away_. Sylvain’s known this all his life, and lest he ever had forgotten, someone somewhere had always seen fit to remind him that he’ll be the _next _Margrave Gautier. That there can only be one.

But for all that this Margrave Gautier is a mortal man, too, one Sylvain has always known will and should die, one who won’t leave this world much better than he entered it…

He’s also the only man Sylvain has ever known as ‘Father.’ And Sylvain hates that this title, second to that of ‘Margrave,’ makes him feel anything other than _guilt_ for looking forward to the end.

“So, now that your day’s plans have been foiled,” Mercedes begins, making to rise from bed, and Sylvain sees an opportunity to change the subject. And direction of her body.

He wraps his arms around her and drags her back to the mattress. “I’m gonna take a lazy day,” he whispers into her neck, “with my wife.” He nibbles small, precise bites along each sensitive muscle in her neck. Her fingers card through his hair, and she lets herself be pulled into his embrace.

“What if your wife has a busy day planned?”

“Mm, well, I’d encourage her to reconsider, but fortunately—” Sylvain sucks hard enough on her neck she’ll be sure to start her day marked before she’s even left their quarters, “—I know she’s got absolutely nothing on her schedule.”

Mercedes’s breathless laughter tickles his ear, and his tongue makes its descent to her nightgown. “It’s true. I suppose she might be lazy, too.”

Sylvain caresses her sides, hiking up her nightgown with each massage against her curves. “Lazy day, lazy day,” he singsongs, and with a dramatic, brief _whoosh _of cold air, the nightgown’s gone and her skin is _there_. 

Mercedes doesn’t object when he goes back to exploring her neck and chest with his lips, mouth, tongue. She certainly doesn’t object when he finally closes his teeth around a pert nipple, swipes his tongue over those three freckles he keeps forgetting to savor. And she has absolutely zero complaints when his mouth descends _further_ and his head disappears under the covers.

It’s not true that the future heads of House Gautier can take the _entire _day to themselves. But here in the late morning of their bedchamber, at least they can dictate when the day officially begins.

* * *

The first time he and Mercedes had successfully pulled it off, they’d still been in school at the Officers Academy. 

They were both the oldest Blue Lions, and Mercedes was the oldest student in the entire school. Ordinarily, such things never really occurred to either of them; they had friends and girls aplenty, and most everyone had more interesting parts of their personality to pay attention to. 

But sometimes, the two of them just wanted to get away from sixteen-year-olds and their...teenager-ness. 

They had both seen Ingrid and Dimitri awkwardly, _painfully _flirting too often at the stables to want to work that task one month. So when no one had volunteered to help weed the courtyard outside the classrooms, and the Professor was starting to give that _look _like he’d start selecting ‘volunteers,’ Sylvain’s and Mercedes’s hands shot into the air like they’d coordinated it.

It was boring work. But at least they were together—two friends suffering in the heat, neither with a knack for digging out stubborn thistles. Sylvain had enjoyed making a great show of pain each time he’d stick himself with a thorn, or scrape himself on a trowel, and making Mercedes scurry on over to heal him. In hindsight, she hadn’t fallen for it, only given him that calm, mocking smile...but holding his hands while he swooned anyway.

After a full week and a half of such tedious, backbreaking work, they began finding ways to make the chore go faster.

“Yo, Mercedes! Watch this!”

Mercedes had turned her head to see Sylvain narrowly dodging a falling trowel boosted by a weak wind spell. He winced and said, “Damn it. I wanted to toss it real high and have the wind flip it. Wouldn’t it be totally awesome if it’d landed with the blade in the dirt? You know, like…”

He’d been blabbering, because the more he’d tried to explain his _amazing _idea, the stupider it had sounded. But Mercedes had only nodded thoughtfully.

“Let me try. This is a dangerous way for you to practice your wind spells, Sylvain.”

He’d winked at her. “Is that your way of saying I’m no good?”

That bright, mocking smile again told him all he’d needed to know. “Well. How about you throw it again, and I can cast the spell? I’m not very strong. I should go to training more, but…”

Sylvain threw the garden trowel, Mercedes blasted it with carefully-charged wind, and on their very first try, it curved beautifully and landed trowel-side first, embedded in the soil straight up.

They both had stared at it.

“_Nice_!” Sylvain had yelled, pushing Mercedes’s shoulder like they were little excited kids. She’d clapped, and the glee on her face had been enough for a better, stupider idea to form.

“Hey, okay, what if you do that, and then I—so my fire spells are _way _better than my wind. You’ve seen me, right?” She had, and pleased embarrassment that he hadn’t recognized as _feelings _had charged through his gut. “What if we do it again, except I shoot a fire spell under the wind spell? And it’d go up like a firecracker.”

“Yes! How fun!”

“Let’s go! _Weed duty_!”

And that was how they found themselves sitting in front of Seteth, a little more singed than the rest of his office, unable to defend themselves while the furious advisor lectured them in as many words as the dictionary permitted on how foolish, irresponsible, dangerous, _foolish_ they’d been, and they’d better well be grateful it was only the courtyard that had caught on fire.

Mercedes had shot him a private smile when Seteth’s back was turned, though, and Sylvain had grinned back. The next few practices weren’t _quite _as mindblowingly awesome as the first. But at least there was less fire.

* * *

The second time they pulled it off was at Gronder Field.

Leonie was on her horse nocking an arrow, and time slowed down. Linhardt, Sylvain could see in those horrible, time-warped moments, was perfectly in her sights. It was such a clear shot that he was actually sympathetic with the battleborne satisfaction written all over the former Golden Deer’s face, the adrenaline that must have been coursing through her veins at the promise of such a clean kill.

Mercedes had noticed, too. But her spells were too far. And even Sylvain couldn’t throw a javelin far or fast enough.

Unless…

Their eyes locked.

“_Weed duty_!” Sylvain roared at her, the least sane battle cry he’d ever screamed. But it didn’t matter, because Mercedes understood.

He threw the javelin: beautifully, perfectly aimed, just like Leonie’s arrow would have been. Mercedes’s cyclone buffeted it through the air, and its already-perfect arc sharpened even more. But—_oh, Goddess_—no, it still wouldn’t make it, Leonie might be distracted but _might _is never good enough odds on a battlefield—

Sylvain had blasted Bolganone as his arm reeled back from the throw, and the javelin turned into a meteor.

Leonie’s horse reared in front of the sudden flaming wall roaring to life under her hooves. Sylvain’s javelin stabbed into the cracked soil, white-hot and aflame like a pyre. Sparks flew from the handle. 

The horse reared again, bucking its rider clear out of her saddle. Leonie disappeared behind black smoke and metal, blue-ribboned soldiers. 

Sylvain hadn’t stopped to see if she yet lived, crumpled on the burning soil, or fleeing for her life. Linhardt did live, however—at least for now—and there was an Imperial pegasus rider swooping in on Mercedes that Sylvain needed to help kill.

* * *

“Do you think this one is too small?” Mercedes is holding a comically-oversized ladle in one palm and Sylvain’s hand in the other. He snorts.

“Not the size that matters, sweetheart. It’s how you use it.”

She bops him with the thing and adds it to their growing pile of purchases. It’s their final trip to the market for the last big batches of soup kitchen supplies. Mercedes had wanted to see to it herself, “Because that makes it a special occasion!” 

Sylvain doesn’t mind. It’s good for the people to see the future lord and lady involving themselves in this way. At the same time, he’s going to hire _real _purchasers to do the rest for them once they get home. Better to get their local economy moving than to risk missing something crucial in the name of ‘charity.’

“This is a solid soup pot. It’s not too heavy for cast iron.” She hands him the thing, and he hefts it experimentally.

“It doesn’t feel like it’ll hold much.”

She grins. “But I thought—”

“Well, it’s the Gautier heir mingling amongst the common folk. You saved me the trouble of hunting you down at the castle.”

The voice is mild, unfamiliar, and vaguely hostile. Sylvain looks behind him to see a nondescript merchant eying him with open malice. His hands are at his side, not the sword probably lurking under his summer cloak. It’s hard for him to make out much of his origins. His outfit is standard traveling gear for that sort of social class, and his hair is so pale blond it probably shines in winter.

“You’re looking at me very curiously, Gautier.”

“I think I would be,” Sylvain says cheerfully, tightening his grip on Mercedes’s hand as they face the merchant head on, “given the utter disrespect some guy in the streets has shown me. Are you going to cause a scene for a reason, buddy?”

The merchant sneers. “‘Buddy,’ you need to look closer. My face. Anything familiar?” Venom drips from every word.

_Oh, Goddess_, but Sylvain can’t _begin _to recognize him.

“Everyone said,” the guy spits, noting the confusion on his face, “me and my big sis coulda been twins, what with the way we look.”

Warning bells clang in Sylvain’s mind.

This merchant could be _anyone_.

“Uh,” he says foolishly, and the guy’s furious expression twists with disgust and grief.

“You don’t even remember her name, I bet. Saints strike you down. Do you even remember her _face_?”

And just like that, he does.

The face. Not the name.

She’d been one of Sylvain’s more harmless conquests, he’d thought. It was the Harvest Festival some forgettable number of years ago. They’d enjoyed two days of sweet flirting, coy dancing, too-long presses of his lips on her hand. And they’d _reveled _in one hot night when he’d won her over. They’d clasped hands in candlelight, and he’d dragged her into the shadows of the quietest, darkest wine cellar of a noisy, cheerful tavern. 

He still remembers the smell of wine and freshly-roasted vegetables.

It had been, Sylvain’s always considered, one of the most romantic adventures he’d had, and he’d almost enjoyed it until she’d begged him to stay with her.

He couldn’t, and she didn’t want him, even if—or _especially _if—she knew what she was asking. She wouldn’t understand.

So Sylvain had done the smart thing and promised to see her again, leaving her forever with a stolen kiss on her dawn-lit doorstep, his lying tongue slipping one last secret in her mouth.

_“I love you, Sylvain, I_—_”_

“I remember her.”

Something in the merchant visibly snaps. “You’re a _liar_. She never forgot you. And her _fiancé _never forgave her for it!”

The third time they pull it off, neither Sylvain nor Mercedes speaks a word.

All it takes is the glint of a foreign sword, and they’re already moving.

The soup pot flies from his hand to shield Sylvain’s face, buffeted by a gale of magic wind, and the Wo Dan screeches along the cast iron with enough force to raise sparks. The wind has barely died before the pan goes higher, shot up with raging flames. The searing-hot metal melts the blade like butter.

In only a few seconds, the grieving merchant is left holding nothing but a smoking hilt stamped with Zoltan’s smith seal, too stupefied in his defeat to resist the market guards who’ve finally, _finally_ snapped to attention to do their jobs.

Sylvain doesn’t know what to say once the prison cart rolls away.

He never thought—

He never _would _have thought—

He thought that one was _safe_—

Mercedes takes his arm and guides him to their carriage, directing the cookware merchant to the soup kitchen’s delivery address. She doesn’t say anything while they ride back to the castle in the evening, hand in hand. Nothing she _can _say will ease his guilt. Or fix his mistakes. Or help him move on. Or get him to understand.

And Sylvain’s grateful she’s never pretended she could.

* * *

Mercedes dances into their parlor, but it’s the sound of her voice singing one of Annette’s ridiculous monster-hunting songs that wakes Sylvain from a well-earned afternoon nap.

“What’re you so happy about?” he tries to ask, but all he manages is an eloquent, “Mnuh?”

“I’m sorry, darling! I didn’t mean to wake you.” She pecks the top of his head, and he sinks back into the couch again. “I just left tea with your mother.”

Sylvain thinks maybe he should fall back asleep.

“No, don’t make that face!” Unfortunately for him and his desire to avoid unpleasant topics so soon after a wonderful nap, Mercedes settles onto the couch by his legs and starts chatting. “It was actually rather pleasant. I think we’ve finally come to an impasse on our definitions of _good works_. We have both agreed not to understand each other and may go back to sharing sweets like...how did she put it: _properly-bred young ladies_.”

Sylvain snorts. “‘Young ladies,’” he mumbles, shaking his head. He reaches for her, and Mercedes happily snuggles into his arms. “Good thing to wake up to, I guess…”

“What, young ladies?”

“_This _young lady.”

Sleep has made his voice rough, and the affectionate sentence comes out more as a growl. Bubbly, cheerful Mercedes suffers a violent shudder in his arms, and the taste in the air shifts to something delicious.

“I have wonderful news for you, Sylvain,” Mercedes murmurs, tapping her fingers against his chest. The look in her eyes is positively predatory. 

“Do you?”

“I do.” She brushes her lips over his cheeks, the tip of his nose, his lips for only a half-instant. “You get to wake up to this young lady every day.”

Now is a familiar time. On a normal day, this is the moment for him to smirk, grab, joke, touch. 

That’s familiar now.

That’s normal now.

Sylvain _loves _that this is normal.

He strokes her stockinged calves thoughtfully, hearing her breath hitch. His thumbs trail slow grooves in the fabric, memorizing the feel, like she won’t wear these specific stockings ever again, like her skin won’t change over the years, like his mind will lose the fragments of each moment he has with her until they all blend together. 

Mercedes’s own fingers smooth out his shirt wrinkle by wrinkle. Like she’s doing the same thing. Sylvain can’t hazard a guess as to what must be showing on his face right now, and he doesn’t really care. It’s Mercedes he’s looking at. Who’s crawled on top of him. Who’s wearing a ring with the bloodied Crest of Gautier on its sigil stone. Who’s running her hands up and down his body like she’s touching him for the first time and grateful for it.

“Can I make love to you today?”

Mercedes goes still over his body, and Sylvain knows no fear of her answer.

“Yes,” she gasps, and she cups his face like she’ll break him if she does, or break if she _doesn’t_. “Yes.”

Sylvain buries his hands in her hair, brings her close, and sinks back into _familiar_ to shatter it apart again.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We did it! You did it! They did it! We're done! We're all free!
> 
> Thank you for your constant love, support, comments, and friendship. I hope to share more Fire Emblem: Three Billion Fanfics with you all soon!
> 
> Come hang with me on Twitter @NenalataWrites, my shiny new writing account!

* * *

They’re shaking when their lips come together. Sylvain misses her mouth more than once, planting hot wet open-mouthed kisses on her cheek, tongue slipping against the corner of her mouth. 

_ Slow_.

Mercedes trembles so violently in his arms she can’t keep her fingers steady on his jaw. Fingertips press into the sensitive spots where his neck meets his ears, nails scraping frantic, delicious lines on his scalp.

_ Slow. _

She’s leaning into him awkwardly, legs tucked under her skirt on the couch with only her arms keeping him close. Every time his hand strokes her back just under her collar, she shivers, tries to tug on his shirt, but restrains herself.

_ Slow_.

“Slow,” Sylvain whispers brokenly into her ear. He slides his fingers through her hair, using his grip to guide her away, back, bare her neck. “It’s okay, honey. Slow down. We’ll slow down.”

He trails his lips over the soft, delicate skin under her jaw, silent fluttering promises. Mercedes stifles a moan, and he rubs her back again. 

“Should we not—”

“No, please, I can, I _want _to,” she gasps, leaning back. But not away, not retreating—it’s so she can give him more to kiss, lick, touch. Sylvain sucks a careful mark on _the _spot, circling it with his tongue while she sighs. “You’re right. Slow.”

“Mhm.”

Sylvain’s teeth close on the mark he just gave her, and her response is a breathy, “Thank you.”

“I love you.” He leans back into the cushions and pulls her with him. They’re shaking less. Both of them. Sylvain smooths her hair away from her face, traces the shape of her lips with his finger. She closes her dark, dark blue eyes and kisses it. 

“I love you, too.”

Sylvain is wholly unprepared for her to nip at his fingertip and curl her tongue against it. Startled, he laughs and retreats, much as he wants to leave it, see how much she’ll take when left on her own.

“I want to touch you everywhere,” Mercedes blinks at him, eyelashes fluttering with nerves, or desire, or something _better_. “I always do, Sylvain.”

His name has never sounded so good, or come out of a prettier mouth. He follows the source of the sound, kissing her top lip, tugging the bottom into his mouth with his teeth, tasting every sound she makes. Her moans. Her gasps. His name. Her sighs.

“I love you so much—”

His _name_.

Mercedes is lying properly on top of him now. Her fingers run up and down the soft fabric of his shirt, pinning him to the couch cushions, his legs trapped between her knees. Sylvain’s shirt is thin, comfortable both for training sessions and impromptu naps, and every twitch of her fingers near his nipples, every brush of her breasts on his chest has his breath uneven and labored. She shifts on top of him, and while she doesn’t quite touch his clothed erection, the stupid thing _thinks _she does, and an embarrassing moan tears out of him that her lips don’t quite capture.

Mercedes stares down at him like some deity evaluating his worth. Her pupils are blown huge, black with lust. She’s panting, almost victorious in expression, and—

No.

She’s not a deity.

Not a goddess, not a saint, not some unattainable _thing _for people like him to worship and fear.

“You really like me, huh?” Sylvain mumbles, rubbing his thumb in lazy circles on her thigh. Mercedes _blushes_, as deeply as she did when he’d first asked to kiss her in the monastery cathedral, as she did in Fhirdiad when he’d looked her dead in the eyes and licked each drop of her arousal off his fingers after she’d stopped screaming his praises, as she did last night when he’d taken her hand and asked her on a dinner date.

“Yes,” she breathes. Her hands on his chest creep down, down, wrinkling the shirt, fingers dancing carefully on the scars above his waist. “Do you like me?”

“Yeah.” He sits up to help her push his shirt higher, sliding her skirt up her legs at the same time. “I like you a lot.”

It’s slow going. Mercedes keeps stopping to scratch at his most sensitive, shivery scars: the ugliest one on his side, the deeper, rougher crossbow bolt puncture in his back. Sylvain knows the small, rippled burn on her calf is to be avoided, and he takes his careful time stripping the stocking from that leg.

Finally, _finally_, Mercedes throws his shirt off the couch with enough violence he hears seams tear. Sylvain has managed to free her of that one stocking, but it was only the _one _because of that awful, distracting way she teased at his skin and scars.

Mercedes stares at his bare chest with unabashed hunger, breathless with her breasts heaving under her thin summer bodice. 

And when she makes the mistake of dragging her gaze to his mouth, absently tracing her tongue along her bottom lip, the air shifts. And everything speeds up.

“Four _Saints_, you don’t even know,” Sylvain gasps meaninglessly and seizes her. Mercedes moans a sharp little cry into his mouth, pushing against his tongue with her own. She’s so focused on tasting all his moans and coaxing more from his lips that she can’t help him with her dress. His fingers fumble on the back clasps, and all Mercedes does is wiggle closer, roll her hips against his crotch, laugh when he swears something filthy and grinds into her _hard_.

“Mercedes, please, come on,” Sylvain decides to laugh with her. He throws his hands in the air with enough dramatics to hide his frustration. He hopes.

But no. She _giggles_.

Mercedes sits back, grinning bruised lips. “It opens from the front.”

The snarl tearing from Sylvain’s throat when he lunges for her hardly sounds human.

His fingers are working through the buttons at a rapid-fire pace, _clip-clip-clip_, and she pants into his ear as his nails scrape roughly up and down her spine and he grazes his teeth along her neck.

Sweat’s glimmering on her collarbones and Sylvain can feel his own on his chest. It’s hot, too hot, and he thinks he’s never hated fabric so much in his life.

A button tears off her bodice with an audible _pop_. It clatters to the floorboards and rolls away in a rhythmic metallic drumbeat.

Mercedes giggles, but Sylvain pauses, heart hammering its own drumbeat in his chest.

“Too much?” he asks her, and is embarrassed by how throaty his voice comes out.

She shakes her head. “It’s not a very expensive dress. Repairing it will be no trouble for me.”

It’s not really what Sylvain meant. And he wants to elaborate, wants to be earnest, check again—

But her parted lips and expectant expression give him an answer.

And Sylvain’s only got _so _much strength in him after all this time.

And the dress is, apparently, not very expensive.

The guilt stirring in his stomach settles. “Will it be _trouble _if I tear it off you?” Sylvain hooks a finger in the loosened neckline, and the silk over her breasts brushes his skin.

“Oh, most definitely.”

“Then I guess I’m _trouble_,” he grins, but it’s the joke that matters, not the tease of a threat. Mercedes bats his hand aside and tosses the dress up over her head. Goddess, but who knew laughter could have such a bright _color_? 

“I’m stuck!” Muffled laughter bubbles from behind the skirt over her face. Some emotion, something hard and warm hits Sylvain’s heart like a punch. But the smirk stays on his face as he helps her wriggle free, snickering alongside her.

“Oh, sweetheart. I think you might need my help undressing _all _the time. Can’t have you getting stuck _again_—”

Mercedes shrugs out of the dress and shuts him up with her fingers working through the laces on his pants. The dangerous, taunting edge in his voice gets ruined by the pathetic grunt he lets out when she yanks the laces free.

Sylvain’s every muscle tightens, forcing control into his limbs when he watches her hand’s slow descent into his pants. The first determined trail of fingers up the shaft has him shuddering, clenching and unclenching his fists. She draws him out, hot and hard with a thick bead of precum already glistening on the tip. He forces himself still, but his breath comes out heavy and fast.

Mercedes swallows. He hears it. And it all slows down again.

“A—_ah_!”

Her thumb dips into his slit, circles around his precum carefully and slowly. Sylvain’s hips clumsily follow the motion, the pleasure so white-hot and sensitive he feels close to tears.

Thank the Goddess, but Mercedes doesn’t laugh at whatever _that _choked noise he made was. Instead, she strokes down, hand slick and _tight _and good, so good, so good, _so good_, and he remembers at the same time as her what they’re doing. What’s going to happen.

Sylvain gently pushes her hand away before she’s even slowed down. She tries to look past him, smile and flutter her lashes, but her pulse is racing in her neck when he strokes the side of her face. “Hey,” he says, “you okay?”

“Very.”

He presses his lips against her forehead and feels her eyelashes brush his chin.

“I’m excited.”

He believes her. And he’s _damned _sure it’s not just because ‘excited’ is a rather...delicate but appropriate word for what _he’s_ feeling. But what Mercedes hasn’t said is that she’s nervous. And Sylvain knows, because he is, too.

He tucks her hair behind her ears, one lock at a time. “I love you.” 

Her eyes close. “So you’ve said.”

Panic twinges in his heart, brutal insecurity twisting his stomach for one _awful _instant. But then her eyes open, she _rocks _forward, and over his surprised moan, Sylvain hears her whisper, “I won’t ever tire of hearing that.”

Mercedes nibbles aimless paths up and down his neck while he unfastens the clips on the silk wrapped around her breasts, keeping them hidden from him. She sighs when he tosses it aside to join the growing pile of clothes on the floor. 

“Nice?” Sylvain asks. She pulls back so he can see her nod, and he cups her heavy breasts in his hands. He laughs when his thumbs flick her stiffened nipples. “Silk do it for you?”

He can practically _feel _her blush. “You threw it off so fast; the fabric brushed against them.”

“Mm, okay.” Sylvain kisses her cheek. “Okay.” Her mouth. She tries to follow him when his lips release hers. “Okay.” The center of her neck. Mercedes understands his trajectory and shifts to properly straddle his hips. “Okay.” His lips brush a gentle path down her breastbone, tongue darting out to taste the sheen of sweat between her breasts. “C’mere, love.”

Mercedes grabs the back of his head and uses it as leverage, raising herself to his waiting mouth. His lips place a too-gentle kiss on the very tip of her nipple, then switch to the other side for another equally-gentle kiss. Her frustrated whine’s barely audible.

Sylvain keeps his mouth half a breath away and waits for her to glare at him as only Mercedes can. But her eyes remain fixed on the back of the couch, cheeks bright pink, parted red lips panting and expectant.

Sylvain waits.

And finally, she looks down, concern flickering over her expression. “Is something the—_oh_.”

He latches his mouth over her breast and flicks his tongue over those three freckles. The hand in his hair tightens its grip, and Sylvain takes that as encouragement. He laps at her nipple, teeth lightly grazing the tip when he pulls back. Not enough to hurt, not even enough to make her gasp. But enough for her hips to twitch over his, grinding against his impatient cock in a way that forces Sylvain to lick and nip at her again on the other breast.

Mercedes’s lavender perfume has almost faded with the last glimmers of afternoon sunlight. But the faintest taste of flowers lingers between her breasts, under the sweet warm taste of her sweat. Sylvain’s hands slide down her back, feeling each vertebra under his fingertips. Mercedes pushes his face closer and _keens_ when his teeth time their gentle rhythm with the raking of his nails down her spine.

“Goddess, your voice,” he mumbles against her skin. His tongue darts out to taste the smallest bead of sweat between her breasts. Mercedes’s voice doesn’t reply with anything other than a shaky exhale. Sylvain very badly wants that to change.

He keeps his lips’ attention on her chest; sometimes hot open-mouthed kisses against the top curves of her breasts; sometimes licks on the curves underneath; sometimes rolling his tongue on that single adorably freckled nipple while flicking his fingers over her other, unmarked one. All manner of sounds are torn from Mercedes’s throat, mouth, breath. Sylvain’s heard them all, but familiar as they are, every time she lets him hear one, the sheer, territorial _satisfaction _that he was able to make her feel _right_ brings him just as much dark pleasure as if he’d drawn them out of her for the first time.

With his cock jutting out above the leather waistline, Sylvain’s loose pants are impossibly tight. But he also refuses to stop touching her. Because if he does, if he stops, if he goes for the clasp on his pants or even the laces, the familiarity will change. For real, this time.

“Aren’t you uncomfortable?” she asks him seconds after _wrecking _his self-control with another slow, unconscious grind against his erection.

“I’m _very _comfortable.” To prove his point, Sylvain cups her rear and forces her closer, rubbing himself against her soaked underwear.

It is not very comfortable. But _Goddess _does it feel good.

Mercedes grits her teeth, clearly trying to stifle another moan. He’s about to do it again, maybe dip his fingers inside her underwear this time, when she surges forward and kisses him. 

_ Soft, warm, hot, electric _

Sylvain groans into her mouth, her hands smoothing his hair away from his eyes. He can feel her breasts rubbing against his chest, pressed against him like the ridges of his muscles and scars were always meant for them to rest on. 

The thought’s embarrassing and unlike him enough that he reaches for something he knows. Not a joke, because her tongue’s keeping his own occupied. Not a quick escape, because she’s crawled over him and pinned his willing body to the couch.

No, Sylvain reaches for the back of her thighs and spreads them. She’s less _straddling _him now than she is positioned perfectly above his cock, so that if he were wearing less, if _she _were wearing less, one hard thrust _up _would let him sink into what Sylvain can only imagine would be indescribably tight heat.

Mercedes’s hand creeps down his chest. Her kisses have slowed to gentle little sips and nips at his lips. 

No. 

He can imagine, yes. But he can’t _only _imagine.

Mercedes flicks her thumb against the clasp, Sylvain tangles his fingers in the laces, and through their combined, frantic efforts, the constricting fabric manages to part. 

They break out of the kiss to laugh, foreheads pressed together. “Oh, Goddess. Mercedes, my hand is—”

She laughs again and kisses his forehead. “Let me move a little.” She scoots back, and Sylvain frees his fingers from the knotted mess his laces have become. Her small, teasing smile makes the progress go slower.

“Okay, better.” He crooks two of them at her, beckoning her. “Come here. Let me wipe that little smile off your face.”

He should have known that wouldn’t goad her. Mercedes raises a delicate blonde brow, bends over him _almost _like she’ll comply, and yanks his pants off completely.

“Oh, _shit_—”

His cock’s fully free, and Sylvain hadn’t expected such sheer relief with the sensation. Mercedes doesn’t leave him much time to enjoy that pleasurable surprise. She strokes him slow and steady and tight. Sylvain muffles his next garbled curse with the back of his hand in his teeth.

“You know you’ve gotten _really _good at this, right?”

“I had a rather fine teacher,” Mercedes purrs, letting him go only to crawl back up and grind herself against him properly. Sylvain closes his eyes, shudders, sighs, and he can hear the cruel truth in her voice when she adds, “I’m going to keep smiling, you know.”

He doesn’t have to look. His fingers know where to go. The next time she rocks forward, still clothed on his _cock_, he presses two fingers on the wettest part of her, dipping in as far as the fabric will let him.

Mercedes makes a new, curious, _delicious _sound and freezes. Sylvain does open his eyes now and flashes her an unapologetic grin of his own. “I guess I can live with that. You wanna smile for me—” He tugs down her underwear with the same speed and force she had his pants, and Mercedes topples forward, hands on his chest, letting them tangle around her ankles, “—while you shatter apart around my fingers?”

“J-just your fingers?” Mercedes tries to tease, kicking off that last scrap of clothing between them. But her face is too red, voice too breathy, eyes too bright and alive and excited for him to take her seriously.

“Just my fingers.” Sylvain tilts her chin and keeps his gaze on her while he sucks deceptively gently on her upper lip. The disappointment and confusion doesn’t last long on her face, because even he can hear how his voice deepens when he adds, “For the first round, at least.”

“Oh,” is all he lets her say before he slips his hand between the two of them and flicks his thumb against her clit. Mercedes presses her lips together when she moans, but Sylvain wants to _hear _her. He presses his thumb to her lips, pushing slightly into her mouth, and when he does it _again_, he can feel her tongue slide against the edge of his nail with her desperate little cry.

They usually don’t start this fast. But what’s become Sylvain’s new _familiar_ is colliding with Mercedes’s _unknown_. What used to be simple and easy and comfortable for him has long stopped being so. But at the very, _very _least, he can make something good out of that past _familiar_. He can make it simple for her. Easy. Comfortable.

So, so, so good.

“It’s okay,” Sylvain shushes her next needy moan with a gentler but more purposeful rub. His middle finger dips in, then out of her entrance. Mercedes closes her eyes and shudders, sucking lightly on his thumb. “Gonna make you feel good.”

He slips the finger inside. He’d meant for it to only go one knuckle deep, but Mercedes had taken the opportunity to reach for his openly twitching cock and stroke him in an uneven rhythm. Sylvain’s gasp comes shallow and his finger goes _deep_. She’s so wet he probably couldn’t have stayed slow for long, anyway.

He takes his thumb out of her mouth and brings his hand down to join the other. Mercedes’s breathing is labored, eyes dangerously dark as she slows her pace. 

The thumb that had been in her mouth rubs on her clit in that small, tight circle she loves so much. Mercedes cries out and jerks her hips forward right as he’d prepared to slip a second finger inside her. Sylvain’s fingertip misses and only manages to slide along her folds, but that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. Mercedes gives up on stroking him and hangs her head lower, gripping his chest and riding his hand. 

“Come on, sweetheart,” Sylvain whispers, unable to keep the pleased expression off his face. Mercedes makes a ridiculous, cute ‘gah’ noise when his second finger joins the first. “Where’s that smile you promised me?”

Mercedes tries to laugh; he can tell. But he flicks his thumb over her clit and curls his fingers with a roughness she sometimes likes, and the only thing she’s able to do is cry out something that almost sounds like his name, if his name were written in music and ecstasy instead of letters.

Her eyes keep fluttering shut. She’s riding his fingers so smoothly and flawlessly to chase her pleasure, and Sylvain can feel every one of her shivers and sighs and moans with just two fingers buried inside her. But she keeps her hands roaming on his chest, scratching lightly at his scars when she loses herself. Keeps her lips around the start of his name. Keeps that _expression _unhidden, unabashed on her face, even when she can’t bear to meet his gaze.

“You’re so—” He can’t call her beautiful. “You’re absolutely—”

“_Close_.” Mercedes forces the word through red, bruised lips. Sylvain spreads the two fingers pumping and curling inside her, waits for her to mumble incoherent praises, and pushes a third in, too. Her pace falters, and Sylvain slows down, wonder if it was too much but afraid to _ruin _it by asking. 

He doesn’t have to worry long. Mercedes, apparently now adjusted, looks him dead in the eye, sinks down on his hand, and strokes him _tight_. 

“Fuck!”

“I said—I said _clo_—”

Sylvain laughs hard through his moaning and brings his thumb back to her clit. “Yeah, I’ll give you what you want,” he promises, speeding up both hands’ pace in a way his wrists are sure to regret in a few hours. “You’ve been so good. So good.”

When Mercedes comes, it’s so sudden Sylvain doesn’t realize until she’s shouting into his chest. He recovers from his shock and slows, stroking her through the aftershocks. Her hand lies limp on his hip, and Sylvain can only praise the Goddess she’d had the presence of mind to let go of his cock before she came.

She sighs and shifts against him, and Sylvain takes that as his cue. His fingers are soaked probably almost as much as she is, but she doesn’t mind when he brushes the hair from her forehead. She lifts her face after her breathing’s calmed and blinks at him.

“Now _that’s _a pretty smile,” he tells her over the sound of his abruptly-terrified heartbeat. He kisses that smiling mouth, like he has to convince her.

“I promised just for you,” she drawls. Sylvain’s breath catches in his chest when she wiggles against him. “How _did _you put it...round—one?”

His heartbeat is loud. Fast. Scared.

So _fucking _excited.

“Goddess, I want you,” Sylvain says, instead of asking her how she’s feeling, if she’s ready, if she’s sore, if—

“I want you.” She drapes her legs over his thighs. 

_ He can feel her slickness on the tip of his cock _ . _Goddess, he_—

“Mercedes.” Sylvain swallows, grips her hips. “I want you so much.” And as slowly as he thinks his shaking hands are capable, he draws her down on his cock.

_ She’s wet and he’s barely inside and she’s gripping him and she’s just come but she’s tight and he’s barely in her and she’s so hot around him and she’s pulling him in and he doesn’t know how long he can last or how slowly he can go or how carefully and she’s _ tight _and she’s _wet _and she’s _hot _and she feels so, so, so good_

Mercedes closes her eyes and hums, and Sylvain, brought back to himself, just stares at her, riveted. When she shifts her weight and sinks down even an _inch _more, Sylvain bites his tongue hard enough to hurt.

_ He can’t speak _.

“Are you okay?”

Mercedes smiles, as shyly as he thinks he’s seen her. “I’m _wonderful_.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain mutters, trying to keep his hands steady on her hips. “Yeah, you really are.”

“Mm.” Mercedes pushes herself down more. He helps guide her.

_ She’s tight, tighter like this, the deeper he goes the more he wants to _ fuck _her wet heat_

“Okay?”

“One moment.” Mercedes takes a deep breath.

“Hurts?”

Mercedes laughs, and it sounds strained, but not pained. “One word questions?”

Sylvain tries to laugh, too, and _oh_, now that he hears his own voice, he understands why she sounds the way she does. “One word answers, please.”

“No.” 

Sylvain brings her down more. She gasps, halfway to a moan.

“More, please.”

_ He’s not afraid anymore because she’s so tight and hot and wet and he’s _ missed _this, his cock has missed this and body parts don’t have fear, just needs and ways to meet them and his cock _needs _this girl_—

“Mercedes,” Sylvain rests his head on her breastbone and kisses the skin there. He feels her take a deep breath, and in that space between her gasp and her sigh, he buries himself to the hilt.

“A—ah, Sylv—ah, Sylvain, yes—”

“Oh fuck you’re fuck—_fucking_’s sake, Merce—”

_ She’s so tight. Hot. His cock moves so easily through her, into her. She’s so tight around him like she never wants him to pull out. Like this girl will want him to _—

Sylvain shudders and thrusts into her for the first time. Properly. Mercedes’s arms wrap around him, pinning him against her body, keeping him close. He can’t see where they’re joined, hadn’t had a proper chance to _look_, but Goddess, she feels—

The sweat on the back of his neck is cooling. “Good?”

“I’m fine, I’m good, please, Sylvain,” Mercedes babbles. Her fingers twist the longer, unrulier locks of his hair, and the pinprick pain grounds him. Sylvain lifts her, just a little, and they both moan when she feels him grind into that sensitive part inside her, when he feels the way her walls release him only to tighten _more_.

“You feel—”

_ So good, baby _.

Sylvain forces his eyes open only to see Mercedes’s have closed. She’s smiling, no tension in her face. She takes a deep breath, bites her lip—which is all Sylvain can look at all of a sudden—and pushes herself up, then down. Like an experiment. And again.

Sylvain watches, entranced, letting Mercedes get a rhythm going. It’s inconsistent, a little unsteady, even. But the sight, the feel of her—

_ Slick, hot, this woman feels _—

—makes any inelegant motion on her part all the more—

_ Ravishing, delicious, he wants to eat her alive, spend all day between her thighs, his mouth, her tongue, this woman is _—

“Perfect,” Sylvain breathes, smoothing his hands down her shivering spine. “Look at you. Just—just look at you.”

Mercedes laughs. The huskiness in her voice curls some sort of tantalizing sensation in his chest. “We don’t have the mirror this time.”

_ This time, they’re on the couch, and she’s riding his cock like it was made to fit the shape of her, all of her. Next _—

“Fuck.” Sylvain bites down on the top curve of her breast, bites down on words he hasn’t quite formed in his mind. “I’m—can I speed up?”

“Please, please,” Mercedes says in a rush, like she’d been afraid to ask. Sylvain groans in relief and starts to set his own pace, but then she makes a _mistake_. “Faster, please, faster.”

“Oh, hell.” Sylvain pulls her closer than he ever has before, and she’s so tight and he’s so deep there are too many spaces between their bodies and he has no idea how to bridge the gap. 

But he does know how to drive into her—

_ Sylvain knows how to fuck girls. _

He knows the angle where, so often—

_ Sylvain knows how to make them scream, cry, whether they wanted him to or not. _

He knows _that _spot on her neck—

_ Sylvain knows how to make girls scream and cry whether he means to or not. _

“Slower, right here, let me—” Mercedes shifts, and a whole world of _heat _and stars and _sweat _and sensation opens up. The rest of what she says gets cut off, because this new position has her moaning—

_ Sylvain knows how to make them cry his name _.

“I love you, I love you,” Mercedes half-sobs into his neck. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and kisses anything she can reach, unable to keep her mouth on the same spot twice.

Sylvain slows down. He lifts her up. And pulls out.

Mercedes gasps a confused, shaky little “_Oh_” when he sets her down on his legs. In relative safety.

“Mercedes, I…” 

He refuses to look away. But now he knows what she feels like; how his arms need to flex so he can move her over him, into her, into her, into her—

“I can’t come inside you.” 

Sylvain’s not a _coward _and he strokes her cheek, trying to ignore the guilty twinge in his heart when her eyebrows push together. She’s pink all over and marked with bruises in the shape of his mouth. His cock hardens again; he hadn’t even _realized_ it needed to.

“But Goddess, I want to.”

Mercedes nods, like she understands. And when her gaze darts to the box behind the desk that he _thought _he’d hidden better, it’s Sylvain’s turn to blush.

He doesn’t really want to ruin his renewed erection by thinking of her having tea with Casp—

“Do you want me to…” Mercedes makes the _silliest _little gesture, and Sylvain’s shout of laughter echoes in the parlor. 

“Let a man have some dignity, honey.” He slides his fingers in her hair, and she leans into his touch with a happy hum. He tugs to bring her closer. Right against her ear, he whispers, “And in two minutes, this dignified man wants to see _this _dignified lady spread out on their bed.”

Sylvain can’t tell if it’s embarrassment or excitement that makes Mercedes scurry off his lap with such haste. Either way, his delighted laugh follows her flight until the bedroom door slams shut behind her. 

He rakes a hand through his sweaty hair, steels himself, and leaves the couch, too. 

The soft leather one, Sylvain’s learned, is the most comfortable. It’s the thinnest, too, which helps. But another good reason for him to open the box of smuggled contraceptives right now is for him to collect himself alone.

He didn’t hurt her.

And for once, that feels _good_.

Oh, fuck, it had felt good. She’d felt so good. Mercedes had felt so _good _on him, around him, taking him, touching him…

And she’s on their bed right now, ready for her husband—for him—to join her there, to make love to her until they never want to leave their room. To make her feel good.

For _her _to make him feel good, for—

“This is fucking stupid,” Sylvain snarls. He grabs the leather...one and a bottle of oil and slams open their door before he knows how he’s moved so fast.

“That was three minutes. I counted.”

Mercedes lies sprawled on their bed, propping her head up by the pillows, legs half-spread with her hand modestly covering the wet curls he can _see _glistening from this distance. 

_ Perfect _.

“Oh? Did you miss me?” Sylvain grins. He pauses just inside, reaches out for the edge of the door, and slams it shut. He’s already stalking towards the bed before the hinges even properly click closed.

“Yes,” Mercedes breathes. The tiniest gasp leaves her lips as he settles onto the mattress next to her. 

“I missed you, too,” he says, brushing back her hair. She closes her eyes. “Mercedes, I’m gonna use a little of this, okay? Might be a little cold. Just warning you.” Mercedes opens them again so he can show her the bottle, the oil already on his impatient fingers.

He wants to taste every one of her smiles. “You know I don’t mind the cold.”

“Oh, _Saints_, I do,” he growls, and he captures her lips in hers at the same moment he plunges that finger back into her again. Mercedes writhes in his arms, but Sylvain _knows _what this motion means.

_ Closer, closer _. He adds another.

“You promised,” Mercedes accuses him. She reaches for his cock again. “You—ah—_ah_—”

Sylvain slicks himself up with his free hand and kisses her so she doesn’t have to see him slide himself into the leather.

“I did,” he grins against her lips. “Didn’t forget, sweetheart.” 

He hoists one of her legs over his shoulders and slots himself between her thighs again. “I love everything about you,” Sylvain tells her and pushes himself back inside.

_ Hot wet tight, this girl’s so _—

“Sylvain!”

“You’re just—” Sylvain thrusts deeper, and Mercedes’s hands push against his shoulderblades, closer, deeper, so _tight_, “Mercedes, you have _no _idea.”

“You feel…”

“Yeah?” Harder now. Their sheets tangle behind her back, and Sylvain plants his hand next to her head to keep her steady, keep looking at her face. “How do I feel?”

“_Wonderful_.” Mercedes’s hand presses on his cheek, and he gets the hint and kisses her. She can’t do more than let him dip his tongue in her mouth, tracing her teeth while she moans. 

_ This girl, this one’s so _—

She breaks free for air. Sylvain can hardly make out what she’s saying, she’s panting so hard, but somehow, because—

_ He knows this girl so well _—

—because he wants what she’s asking, too.

“I got you,” he says into Mercedes’s ear. His hand snakes down, between them, and she lifts her hips like Sylvain even needs _guidance_, like he hasn’t done this countless times, like he doesn’t—

_ Like he knows this girl, like he loves this _—

It doesn’t take much. Sylvain’s wrist is tired and minutes away from cramping but she’s so _sensitive _and she—

“I love you, sweet—oh, Goddess, you—! Please, more—you’re so—”

—and she loves him and she already came once and she’s so _tight _around him, and—

“Mercedes, show me, look at me.” Sylvain’s close, too, and the sight of her lips parted to form words she knows he hates hearing is bringing him closer, but he wants, has to, she needs to come first, “I need you to come around my cock. I need to feel you.”

Mercedes screams.

And again.

“Sylv, you’re _so_—”

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, Merce—” She’s so tight, this—Mercedes is so _perfect_, she’s falling apart, Sylvain has seen her look like this but he’s never _felt _it like this, “Mercedes, thank the _Goddess_ you—”

His climax races hot and fast and almost _painfully _too long, and Mercedes somehow clamps down around him even _tighter_. Sylvain forces himself to keep going, just a little more even as his blood thunders through his body like drums, to let her feel all of it, all of _him_. Her screams have quieted to moans, to whimpers, to—

Sylvain pulls out. “Why are you _laughing_?”

He can’t remember being this tired in his life. Or this...this…

He’s laughing, too.

Mercedes throws her arm over her eyes. Her hair sticks up absolutely everywhere it can. “I sounded _ridiculous_.”

Sylvain slides the leather off while her vision’s obscured and wraps it in a handkerchief on the nightstand. _Into the laundry basket it goes. With the others_. _How the laundress always did love him, even as a preteen_.

“So did I,” he says, mostly to make her feel better.

So Sylvain’s almost _offended _when she agrees. “I suppose. We’re both ridiculous.”

Mercedes isn’t covering herself now. Flopped back on the bed—her bed, his—with her legs splayed in the most undignified, least sensual manner. Her hair’s a wreck, her mottled skin even more so. And the sheets are soaked with sweat and arousal and pretty much everything Sylvain likes in his bed.

“I like that you’re here,” he says stupidly. He blushes—_stupidly_—and Mercedes pats his hand. 

“Well, I don’t like that _you’re _over there.” Her fingers turn him palmside up and stroke the lines in his hand. “Come hold me.”

Something is going to be different.

They’re different.

This is different.

Everything is going to _change_.

“Yeah.” 

Sylvain slides his legs over the edge of the bed and lies next to her. “We’re gonna get cold like this,” he says before she can snuggle into his arm. “And _I’m _not you.”

Mercedes smiles. He doesn’t think he’s seen _her _this tired, either. “Okay. Just this once, but these sheets are…” She wrinkles her nose, and it’s so cute he has to kiss it away. 

Sylvain doesn’t remember falling asleep. He remembers Mercedes did first. He’d tossed the sheets haphazardly over their two bodies, and neither of them had bothered to arrange the blankets. They left them where they’d fallen. 

Mercedes had curled up into his chest, one arm thrown over his hip, a leg over his thigh. She slept like this only after sad dreams or wild, intense, _wonderful _nights. Like she couldn’t bear to be so far from his skin.

“Your hair’s so soft,” Sylvain remembers mumbling against her head. 

He doesn’t remember dreaming.

And Mercedes is not in bed when he wakes up. The room is dark, the moon is high through the window, and Sylvain’s sleep-filled, panicked eyes haven’t adjusted to make sense of the waking world.

_ Different. _

_ Different from what they had before. _

_ It’s so familiar it _ hurts _and of course it was _different—

“I shouldn’t have gone to bed like this!” An unpleasant sound, a comb struggling through tangled hair. A more pleasant sound: her _voice_. 

Mercedes is sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the mirror, tearing her comb unsuccessfully through her hair. The tiniest, most pathetic candle sits in a tin next to her.

“You’re naked,” Sylvain rasps, like she needed to know.

She gives him such a _look_ that he knows he’s going to be ignored. “I can’t believe I didn’t think to brush it. Oh, Sylvain! What if I have to shave my head? I don’t think I’ll look good much shorter than this!”

Sylvain rolls out of bed—almost literally—and cuddles up behind her. Both naked, both on the floor, both sheepishly grinning at their reflections in the mirror. “Probably not,” he agrees. “I promise I’ll still like you, though.”

His heart’s hammering, but he can’t stop smirking when she tries to bat at him with the comb. “You could stop teasing and maybe help, you know!”

“I thought you could do every—” Sylvain plants a kiss under her ear, “—thing—” on her jaw, “on your own—” the corner of her lips, and she squirms under his caress. 

“Well!” Mercedes huffs. Sylvain prepares himself to hear some iteration of _it’s-your-fault-I-look-like-this_. “I...I’d like you to help me anyway. It would feel...nice.”

Sylvain grabs the comb so fast she cautions him not to break it, she’s already almost ruined it. Now’s not the time to pay attention to his slowly-hardening cock. It’s the time to ignore the heat rushing to his face, his gut, the fast, frightened thoughts buzzing in the back of his brain.

“We probably need baths,” he tells her softly. As non-sensually as he can manage. He feels Mercedes nod beneath the comb he’s trying to tease through the knots in her hair. “How did this even _happen_?”

“Oh, I wonder,” Mercedes says breezily. Her hand is on his outer thigh, drumming a soothing little rhythm. She watches him comb her hair in their reflections, not even bothering to hide her silly, pleased smile.

So Sylvain doesn’t hide his. There’s a lot being reflected back to them right now. A lot that will terrify him later, or terrify him already. Things neither of them have noticed yet, not like freckles and scars and burns and long eyelashes. 

But a stupid, lovestruck smile is the easiest one he can look at. Even if it’s on his own face.

The comb drags through her hair, and to both of their surprises, a single knot tears itself free. A single, beautiful lock of hair untangles itself. “You did it!” Mercedes cheers, patting his leg like a reward. 

“Only like, thirty million more left.” 

Mercedes closes her eyes and leans back into his chest. “I don’t mind. You’re doing a fine job of it.”

* * *

**[end]**


End file.
